Yeolmu Kimchi (Quick-Fermented Young Radish Greens) Recipe

This quick radish kimchi is crunchy and cooling, perfect for complementing a bowl of barley bibimbap or noodles.

A bowl of Korean quick-fermented yeolmu kimchi.

Serious Eats / Liz Clayman

Why It Works

  • The addition of a potato porridge speeds up fermentation, while also counteracting the grassy flavors in the greens.
  • Cabbage greens add sweetness to balance out the radish greens' peppery kick.
  • Optional additions of salted shrimp, fish sauce, and gochugaru allow you to make the kimchi as funky or spicy as you'd like.

What Is Yeolmu Kimchi?

One of my favorite summerkimchis, called yeolmu kimchi, is made with young, crunchy radish greens—usually with their tiny radish roots still attached. This is a quick kimchi that’s ready to eat in just a few days, with the help of a starchy porridge to speed up the fermentation.

This kimchi brings back memories from my childhood, when I lived with my grandmother in Gangwon Province, north of Seoul. Our house had a courtyard, and in the summertime, we liked to open the doors and put a small table down with a view of the outdoors and our garden full of eggplant, chiles, cucumbers, and perilla leaves. Korean summers are humid and sticky, but we’d play outside, sweaty and happy. When my grandmother and mother called us home for lunch, they’d often serve up bowls of cold noodles topped with crunchy, cooling yeolmu kimchi.

The Role of Kimchi in Korean Cuisine

Kimchi is special to us Koreans. Traditionally, it played an important role in the Korean diet by preserving vegetables during the hot summers and freezing-cold winters. Even though we have refrigeration today, we love kimchi for its funk, fragrance, and flavor. It’s sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and savory all at once, pairing well with meats andadding variety to any meal.

We consider kimchi to be good for our health, and there are even Koreans who pack it when traveling abroad. With over 200 kinds of kimchi, we’ll have at least one type in our fridge at all times, usually something seasonal and often something well-aged. It really depends on personal preference—some Koreans love the fresh, bright flavors of new kimchi, and others love the deeper, more mellow flavors of aged kimchi.

Uses for Yeolmu Kimchi

Yeolmu kimchi can be eaten fresh, as soon as a day after it's made, though I prefer the flavors you get after about a week. If you make a mild version, without fish sauce or the extra gochugaru (Korean red chili flakes), it’s nice as a banchan (side dish) with spicy, meaty foods.

The primary ingredients in yeolmu kimchi, from top to bottom and left to right: potato, salted shrimp, ginger, onion, cabbage, garlic, chiles, young radish greens.

Serious Eats / Daniel Gritzer

If you make your yeolmu kimchi with the fish sauce and extra gochugaru, it’s great for barley bibimbap: Start with pressed barley (found at Korean grocery stores), soak for 30 minutes with your rice (using a 1:1 ratio), and cook as you’d normally cook rice. Top the bowl of warm barley rice with a generous ladleful of kimchi.

The spicy version of yeolmu kimchi is also good with cold noodles: Boil some somyun (thin wheat noodles), chill, and top with cold, clear beef broth and yeolmu kimchi. Garnish with a thin slice of cooked beef and a boiled egg sliced in half lengthwise, and pour in some kimchi juice.

And if you have any yeolmu kimchi left after a few months and it’s getting old, don’t toss it out! Use it for kimchi fried rice, sautés, or seafood braises. Every Korean grandma knows a hundred ways of using old kimchi, and trust me, you don’t want to waste good flavor.

Young radish greens kimchi being eaten with chopsticks.

Serious Eats / Liz Clayman

Pul and the Fermentation Process

Keep in mind that this is a quick ferment: Yeolmu kimchi uses pul (풀), a starchy porridge for kimchi, to speed up the fermentation process. In all kimchi, as with other preserved vegetables likesauerkrautanddill pickles, naturally occurring lactobacillus bacteria consume the vegetable sugars, producing lactic acid (preserving the vegetables) and CO2 (giving us bubbles...and, if your container is sealed too tight, sometimes explosions). The starchy pul not only balances out the greens’ grassy flavors, but also gives the lactobacillus a megadose of carbohydrates to chow down on and really get the fermentation started.

The exact amount of pul you use isn’t important, and when you're making kimchi for long-term storage, it isn’t even necessary. (Given enough time, the vegetables have more than enough sugars for a full fermentation.) But for quick fermentations like this one, the pul helps speed up the process. Any kind of starch, such as glutinous rice flour or all-purpose flour, can be used to make the porridge, but I prefer a basic white potato simply simmered in water, then blended into a slurry.

The radish greens (yeolmu) bring a wee bit of peppery kick, and the young cabbage greens, eolgari baechu (얼갈이 배추), also sold as put-baechu (풋배추), add a nice contrasting sweetness. I use a 1:1 ratio of radish to cabbage greens, but you can go with an all-radish version for more pungency.

这个泡菜easily adaptable to your taste. With the optional additions ofsalted shrimp, fish sauce, and gochugaru, you can make these radishes as funky and spicy as you like.

How to Make Yeolmu Kimchi

Step 1: Make a Porridge (Pul)

Collage of the making the pul for young radish greens kimchi.

Serious Eats / Daniel Gritzer

For seasonal, quickly consumed kimchi recipes like this one, I start by making the pul (풀), or porridge. You can use any kind of potato you have, but waxy potatoes tend to boil and blend down into a stickier porridge, making the mixing a much gummier process. Your choice of potato, however, won’t affect the flavor. Russets are a good choice, as are basic white potatoes.

Step 2: Prep and Salt the Greens

When I prep the greens, I split any thick radish roots in half or even quarters lengthwise, so they ferment evenly along with the little guys. I handle the greens as minimally as possible and avoid salad spinners, which run the risk of bruising their tender leaves and releasing too much grassy flavor. Anyhow, they don’t have to dry perfectly; kimchi is a wet preparation, and there's more water on the way! After you wash and drain your greens, it’s time to salt them.

I salt the greens in a large bowl, with coarse sea salt if possible. Fine salt penetrates too quickly, making it difficult to control the seasoning.

Salting vegetables for kimchi is often a matter of personal taste, but a rough estimate would put the typical final salinity at around 3 to 5%. For the vegetables, the general idea is to add enough salt to wilt the vegetables at room temperature in about an hour or two—maybe roughly a good handful per layer of greens (or around 15% salt by weight; don't worry, you'll rinse most of this salt off after wilting the greens).

When they're ready, your wilted greens shouldn’t be stiff, but should instead bend easily when you hold a piece up. I recommend rinsing one piece to taste it—it should taste pleasantly salty. If you didn’t get it quite right in this step, you’ll be able to compensate later with your brine.

Now it's time to rinse the wilted greens of excess salt and drain them well.

Step 3: Add Flavorings

Collage of adding flavorings to young radish greens kimchi.

Serious Eats / Daniel Gritzer

For the base of my seasoning, I roughly chop fresh red chiles and stir them into a paste of onion, garlic, ginger, and the cooled porridge (pul). When I want a more refreshing summer kimchi, I’ll stop here. The optional additions of salted shrimp (saewoojeot) and fish sauce add umami and salt, but many prefer the clean and sharp taste of kimchi without them. If you’re feeling funky, go for it—it’s up to you!

Step 4: Cover With Brine

The trick in this recipe is to use a basic saltwater brine to balance out the overall saltiness of the kimchi and create a good environment for the lactobacillus to thrive, ultimately arriving, as mentioned above, at a salinity of about 3 to 5%. If my chili paste mixture isn't salty enough, this is where I can add more salt. And vice versa—if I made my mixture too salty (don’t forget, shrimp paste and fish sauce add salt!), I’ll make a milder brine here. You can compensate for oversalted greens with the brine, too.

The salt is important not just for flavor but also for tipping the scales in favor of friendly lactobacillus. Most nasty food bacteria don't do well in salty environments, but lactobacillus does.

Most importantly, don't stress too much, since you have some latitude here in terms of the salt level. While you can calculate it all by weight, it's just as easy to do it by taste. Remember, you want the overall saltiness of the kimchi to be somewhere in the zone of ocean water, which is a bit saltier than what most of us consider to be the "perfect" level of seasoning in the food we eat.

To finish my kimchi prep, I place the rinsed and drained greens in a large container and cover them with the onion and chili paste, along with the pul (if using). Then I pour the brine in on top of that, making sure it's enough to fully cover all the solid ingredients.

Don’t forget to keep your kimchi away from air. All the vegetables should be fully submerged in the brine; use a plate, fermentation weight, or a layer of plastic wrap pressed against the surface to keep the air off the greens. Lactobacillus do their work with anaerobic fermentation, so just remember: Kimchi hates air!

Young radish greens kimchi.

Serious Eats / Liz Clayman

Keep it out on the counter for a day, or until you just start to smell that funky fermentation starting up, then store it in the fridge. After about a week, the kimchi should be ready to eat.

Eating young radish kimchi with chopsticks.

Serious Eats / Liz Clayman

(As told to Sonja Swanson.)

September 2018

Recipe Facts

Active:2 hrs
Total:24 hrs
Serves:48 servings
Makes:3 quarts

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For the Porridge (Pul, 풀):

  • 2 medium黄褐色马铃薯(about 1 pound;450g), peeled and cut into large pieces (avoid waxy, high-moisture potatoes)

For the Greens:

  • 4 bunches yeolmu (열무; Korean youngradish greens, with small roots attached), about 2.5 pounds or1.1kg

  • 1 buncheolgari baechu(얼갈이 배추; young, green winter cabbage), about 2.5 pounds or1.1kg(see notes)

  • Coarsesea salt

For the Seasoning Paste:

  • 15 to 20 medium spicyfresh red chiles(about 10 ounces;280g)

  • 2Korean cheongyang chiles (orjalapeños)

  • 1largewhite onion(about 1 pound; 450g), roughly chopped

  • 8 mediumcloves garlic(about 2 3/4 ounces;80g)

  • One1 1/2–inch pieceginger, peeled and sliced

  • 1/4cupsaewoojeot (salted shrimp), optional (see notes)

  • 1/4cupgochugaru(Korean chile flakes), optional (see notes)

  • 1 to 2tablespoonsmyeolchi aekjeot (Korean anchovy sauce), optional (see notes)

Directions

  1. For the Porridge:Add peeled potatoes to a saucepan and cover with enough water to submerge. Bring to a simmer and cook until soft enough to pierce with a fork, about 20 minutes. While potatoes are hot, break up with a fork. Using an immersion blender or countertop blender, purée potatoes with the cooking water until smooth. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

  2. To Prep the Greens:Using a paring ortourné knife, clean the yeolmu by trimming any fibrous stems and damaged leaves and scraping the radish roots clean while keeping them attached to the leaves. Pay extra attention to the top part of the roots, where a lot of soil tends to hide. Wash radish greens well of any dirt or sand; allow to drain, but do not spin dry.

  3. Thoroughly clean and trim any roots, woody bits, or damaged leaves from the cabbage. Wash cabbage well of any sand and dirt; allow to drain, but do not spin dry. Cut the cleaned radish greens and cabbage into 2-inch pieces.

  4. In a very large bowl, lay down one layer of greens, then sprinkle a handful of salt on top. Repeat until all your greens have been layered with salt. (If you want to weigh the salt, you should use about 15% of the weight of the greens, though the amount of salt doesn’t need to be perfect, as it will be rinsed away soon. The more salt you use, the faster the greens will wilt, and vice versa.) Toss the leaves gently a couple of times; be careful not to bruise the leaves while tossing. Let stand at room temperature until wilted, 1 to 2 hours.

  5. Rinse a piece of cabbage or kimchi and taste it. If you taste a little saltiness, it’s ready. The radish stems should also bend gently when you hold them upright, while still maintaining some crunch. Rinse the wilted greens gently in cold water and drain again.

  6. Meanwhile, Make the Seasoning Paste:Roughly chop red and green chiles into 1/8-inch pieces. In a blender, purée chiles with onion, garlic, ginger, saewoojeot (if using), gochugaru (if using), and myeolchi aekjeot (if using) until smooth.

  7. Mix the room-temperature porridge into chile-onion paste. If saewoojeot and myeolchi aekjeot have been omitted, season to taste with salt. Taste the paste; it should be about as salty as a well-seasoned soup, and no more so. Season with additional salt only if needed.

  8. To Make the Kimchi:排水性良好的蔬菜添加到发酵crock or nonreactive container and pour the chile mixture over the top.

  9. Combine 2 quarts (1.9L) water with enough salt to make a mild brine. If your chile paste was too salty, you should make a brine that tastes about as salty as tears (about 2% salt by weight); if your chile paste wasn’t salty enough, make your brine as salty as the ocean (about 3% salt by weight). Pour brine over greens and paste, then press greens down. There should be enough brine to cover all the greens; if not, make more brine and add it until there's enough to cover.

  10. Press greens down to fully submerge them, then seal with an airtight lid. You can use a plate, a fermentation weight, or plastic wrap to keep the greens submerged. What's important is that the greens are not exposed to the air.

  11. Allow mixture to stand at room temperature until you begin to see signs of fermentation (a slightly funky smell and little bubbles of gas on top of the kimchi), about 1 day. Transfer to refrigerator. You can start eating kimchi right away, but it tastes best after about 7 to 10 days.

Special Equipment

Immersion blenderorcountertop blender.

Notes

If you don’t have eolgari baechu, either use the tender yellow cores from Napa cabbage or halve the rest of this recipe and add the juice from 1/4 of an Asian pear.

If you prefer a cleaner, less fishy flavor, you can skip the optional saewoojeot and myeolchi aekjeot and season only with salt. But if you're a fan of deep umami flavor, use either or both of those ingredients. For spicier kimchi, add the gochugaru; for less spicy kimchi, omit it.

Nutrition Facts(per serving)
27 卡路里
0g Fat
6克 Carbs
1g Protein
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Nutrition Facts
Servings: 48
Amount per serving
卡路里 27
% Daily Value*
Total Fat0g 0%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol0mg 0%
Sodium424mg 18%
Total Carbohydrate6克 2%
膳食纤维1克 4%
Total Sugars 1g
Protein1g
Vitamin C 17mg 85%
Calcium 41mg 3%
Iron 1mg 5%
Potassium 324mg 7%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)