Every home fermenter can name the ferment that started it all, and more often than not the answer is kimchi. Korea's beloved fermented cabbage is tangy, garlicky and very much alive, and once you've tasted it fresh you'll understand why the jar in the supermarket chiller never quite compares. A kimchi making kit makes the real thing surprisingly easy: the specialist Korean ingredients arrive in the box, you add one cabbage and a handful of fresh aromatics, and about a week later you're lifting genuinely fermented, made-by-you kimchi out of your own fridge. This guide covers what's in the kit, what to buy fresh, how the five steps work in plain English and what to expect while the microbes do their quiet work.
What is kimchi, exactly?
Kimchi is Korea's beloved fermented cabbage: bite size pieces of Chinese leaf (napa) cabbage coated in a vivid red chilli paste and left to ferment until a distinctive tangy, sour flavour emerges. It's crunchy, spicy and savoury all at once, and unlike almost anything else in your fridge, it's alive. The fermentation that makes it doesn't stop when the recipe ends, so the flavour keeps deepening from one week to the next.
Why make your own kimchi instead of buying a jar?
Freshness, mostly, and control. Homemade kimchi is a living ferment that you get to taste at every stage, from mild and fresh in its first days to properly punchy a few weeks on, and you decide the exact moment it's right for you. You also decide the heat, so a fire-breathing batch and a family-friendly one are both on the menu. And then there's the theatre. Shop-bought kimchi arrives finished; yours puffs its bag and reports its progress daily, and once you've watched a ferment come to life on your own shelf, the jarred stuff feels rather flat.
What's inside a kimchi making kit?
The kit brings the specialist ingredients that are hard to find in an ordinary supermarket, plus the equipment that makes fermentation foolproof:
- Sweet rice flour. This becomes the "porridge", the glue of the recipe that binds the chilli paste together and helps it cling to every cabbage leaf.
- Dried seaweed powder. One of the chilli paste's key ingredients, stirred in alongside the aromatics.
- Korean dried red pepper. The heart of the chilli paste and the dial that sets your spice level.
- Gloves. Kimchi is mixed by hand, and chilli paste and bare skin are poor companions.
- A fermentation bag. Home for your kimchi during its days in the fridge, packed down tight and squeezed free of air.
From your own kitchen you'll need a large and a small mixing bowl, a small saucepan, and a chopping board and knife, nothing a functioning kitchen doesn't already own. One kit makes two big batches of authentic homemade kimchi, enough to eat plenty and still give some away. And if you'd like a second opinion before committing, our Kimchi Making Kit was featured by Vogue Korea, which is rather like your Yorkshire puddings getting a nod from Yorkshire.
What fresh ingredients do you need?
One short shopping list covers it:
- 1 Chinese leaf (napa) cabbage
- 50g of salt
- 2 teaspoons of sugar
- 7 cloves of garlic
- 5g of fresh ginger
- A quarter of an onion
- 2 spring onions
That's the base recipe, and from there it's yours to customise. Daikon radish and carrot are both classic additions.
How do you make kimchi, step by step?
The whole process takes about a week, but your hands are only busy for an afternoon: around 1.5 hours of brining plus the pleasant work of making the paste and mixing. Here's how to make kimchi in five steps.
Step one: brine the cabbage. Rinse your cabbage, cut a slice into the base and gently pull it apart into quarters, keeping the leaves as whole as you can, then cut it into bite size pieces. Add 50g of salt, pour in water until the cabbage is just covered, and leave it to soak for about 1.5 hours, giving it a stir every half hour. Then rinse it three times to wash off the excess salt and leave it to drain.
Step two: cook the porridge. Heat the sweet rice flour with two teaspoons of sugar and 125ml of cold water in a small saucepan, stirring continuously over a medium heat. You're aiming for the consistency of natural yoghurt, thick and shiny. If it goes lumpy, keep stirring and the lumps will work themselves out. Then cool it, and the easy way is to sit the pan in a bowl of cold water.
Step three: blend the chilli paste. Mince the garlic, ginger and onion as finely as you can manage. A mortar and pestle or a spice grinder is ideal, but a knife and patience do the job. Combine the mince with the cooled porridge, then stir in the dried seaweed powder and the Korean dried red pepper until you have a thick red paste. For a milder kimchi, hold some of the pepper back.
Step four: glove up and combine. Slice the spring onions thinly on the diagonal, then add the drained cabbage, spring onion and chilli paste to your large bowl. Pull on the gloves and mix until every piece of cabbage wears an even coat of red. Pack it all into the fermentation bag, pressing the cabbage down to the bottom and squeezing out as much air as you can as you close it.
Step five: ferment in the fridge. Place the bag in the fridge and leave it for 5 to 7 days, tasting every few days to check how it's coming along. The flavours blend, the sourness emerges, and by the end of the week it has become, unmistakably, kimchi.
What's actually happening inside the bag?
Fermentation, and specifically the good kind. Lactobacillus bacteria convert the natural sugars in the cabbage into lactic acid, and that acid does two jobs at once: it preserves the cabbage, and it delivers the distinctive tangy, sour flavour that makes kimchi taste like kimchi, growing stronger the longer the ferment runs.
Two honest notes, so nothing takes you by surprise. First, the bag will puff up as the ferment produces gas. That's completely normal, just check the bag daily and release the pressure whenever it builds. Second, it will smell strong. Fermenting kimchi has a proper pong, and far from being a problem, it's the sign of a healthy ferment. A puffing, fragrant bag isn't kimchi going wrong. It's kimchi going right.
Can you control how spicy it is?
Completely. The heat lives in the Korean dried red pepper, so a milder batch simply means adding less of it to the paste. And because the kit makes two batches, your first is really a rehearsal for your perfect second: too tame, and you add more pepper next time; too fierce, and you ease off.
How long does homemade kimchi keep?
Around two to three weeks in the fridge once the fermentation is done. It carries on slowly souring over that time, which is a feature rather than a flaw: mild and fresh in week one, pleasingly punchy by week three. In practice, most batches don't survive long enough to test the upper limit.
Is a kimchi making kit a good first fermentation project?
We'd argue it's the best one. There are no crocks, airlocks or specialist jars to buy, because the fermentation bag handles everything and the whole ferment happens quietly in your fridge. The feedback is quick and obvious, with a puffing bag and a growing tang telling you it's working within days. Whether you've been searching for a fermentation kit, a Korean kimchi kit or a kimchi starter kit here in the UK, they all lead to the same happy place: our kimchi making kit has everything above in the box, with enough for two big batches to get the habit properly started.
Kimchi making kit FAQs
Do I need a mortar and pestle?
It's the ideal tool for mincing the garlic, ginger and onion, and a spice grinder works too, but a knife and patience do the job perfectly well. The finer the mince, the better the paste.
My porridge has gone lumpy. Have I ruined it?
Not at all. Keep stirring over the heat and the lumps will work themselves out. It's ready when the texture is thick, smooth and shiny, about the consistency of natural yoghurt.
My cabbage isn't softening in the brine. What now?
Give it longer. The 1.5 hours is a guide, and some cabbages need more time in the salted water. Keep stirring it every half hour and wait until it has properly softened before rinsing.
My kimchi doesn't taste tangy yet. Is it working?
Almost certainly, it just needs more time. Fermentation speed depends on temperature, salt and the cabbage itself, and the flavour keeps developing across the 5 to 7 days in the fridge. Leave it a few more days and taste again.
Why do I squeeze the air out of the bag?
The bacteria doing the good work thrive without air, and less air in the bag also means less risk of anything unwanted growing. Press the cabbage right down and squeeze out as much air as you can whenever you close the bag.
What if I get stuck partway through?
Head straight to the Help Hut kimchi guide, which covers the questions we're asked most, from stubborn cabbages to enthusiastic bags, and will get your batch back on track.
The Sandy Leaf Farm Kimchi Making Kit, hand-packed in Britain, makes two big batches of real fermented kimchi from your own kitchen.
