I finally stopped worrying about my kimchi being too salty

For years I kept adding less salt than the recipe said, scared it would be inedible. Then my batch last month turned mushy and weird because the bad stuff grew. I looked it up and a guide from a place in Seoul said you need at least 2% salt by weight for cabbage kimchi to work right. I tried that exact amount on my last batch, and after a week it was perfect, tangy but not crazy salty. The salt just controls the ferment, not the final taste. Has anyone else messed up by cutting salt and had a batch go bad?

4 comments

4 Comments

davis.olivia2mo ago

My grandma in Busan always used to weigh her salt with this little brass scale that looked a hundred years old. She said the water in cabbage changes with the seasons, so sometimes you need a tiny bit more or less than a set rule. I ruined two whole jars of radish kimchi last spring by using a measurement from a winter recipe. It got all slimy because the radishes were so juicy that time of year. I guess the salt amount is a good guide, but you still have to pay attention to what the veg is doing.

wells.christopher3d ago

See I gotta disagree a little bit here. That 2% rule has been a rock solid base for me across probably a hundred batches of kraut and kimchi. The trick isn't changing the salt percentage, it's adjusting your process for the veg's water content. When spring radishes are super juicy, I just give them a longer drain time after salting or squeeze out a bit of the liquid before packing them in. The salt is doing double duty - it's pulling water out AND controlling what bacteria grow. If you drop the salt too much, you're asking for trouble with slimy ferments or mold. Your grandma's scale was probably measuring pretty close to that same 2% by weight anyway.

the_alice2mo ago

Wait, so does that 2% rule work for other veggie ferments too, like sauerkraut?

ryanc712mo ago

Actually @the_alice, I've found the 2% salt rule can be a bit off for kraut. Cabbage holds a lot of water, so it often makes its own brine. A little less salt usually works fine in my experience.