• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to footer navigation
  • Skip to footer-bottom navigation
  • Skip to privacy navigation
  • Skip to recipes navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kimchimari

Authentic Korean recipes even YOU can cook!

Free Korean BBQ Cookbook! TAP HERE to GET IT
POPULAR: our 10 takeout favorites
Facebook YouTube Instagram Pinterest Twitter

Authentic Korean Recipes Anyone Can Cook

  • New to Korean cooking? Start Here
  • Recipes
    • Recipe Index
    • Recipes by Alphabet
    • Latest on the Blog
  • Ingredients
    • Korean Ingredient Glossary
    • Pantry Essentials
    • Pantry – Beyond Essentials
    • Korean Ingredients in Depth
  • How To
    • Cooking Basics + Tips
    • Buy + Use
    • Meal Plan
    • Make from scratch
    • Korean Veg Garden
  • Travel
  • Videos
    • Video Recipes
    • Web Stories
  • About
    • About Me
    • Press Interviews and Mentions
  • New to Korean cooking? Start Here
  • SHOP
  • Free Korean BBQ Cookbook! TAP HERE to GET IT
  • Facebook YouTube Instagram Pinterest Twitter
Home How-To

Tips on brining cabbage for Kimchi

Posted:12/09/201361 Comments
cbrined cabbages for Kimjang Kimchi
brined/salted Korean napa cabbages for Kimjang Kimchi

About this time last year I helped my mother-in-law’s Kimjang at her house and in return, I brought home couple containers of her yummy Kimjang. This year, I decided that it was time I tried it all on my own. I was a bit worried that I may not be able to handle the large amount of ingredients but hey, you have to take risks in life, right?

In late September, after my potato harvest, we planted Korean cabbages (배추 Baechoo), radishes (무우 Moo), Korean leeks (대파 Daepa) and mustard greens(갓 kaat) at our family farm for Kimjang.

Korean cabbages planted for Kimjang Kimchi
Korean cabbages planted for Kimjang Kimchi
kimjang baechoo (cabbage) single
kimjang baechoo (cabbage) single
Korean kimjang radish
Korean kimjang radish
Korean leeks planted for Kimjang
Korean leeks planted for Kimjang

After about 2 months, they were ready for picking. These pictures were taken around 11/20 or so. I came home with 16 cabbages, 9 radishes and a huge bunch of mustard greens. Also about two large bunches of Korean leeks.  I bought the rest from the market.

Because I basically used the same Kimjang kimchi recipe from last year I will not list it again here. However, I will write more in depth about prep work- especially brining/salting cabbages. I know I mentioned in my last year’s post how most people just buy already brined cabbages (절임 배추 jeorim baechoo) because people say that’s the most difficult part of Kimjang both in terms of complexity and effort. You can use these tips for pickling cabbages in making regular small batch Kimchi at home.

How to brine (pickle) Korean napa cabbage (배추 baechoo) for Kimchi:

Ingredients

  • 5 KOREAN NAPA CABBAGES (about 6 lb/2.7 kg each)
  • 12 Cups or 5 lb/2.3 kg coarse SEA SALT (bitterns removed)
  • 70 Cups/16.5 litre/17.5 qt cold or lukewarm WATER
  • 1 gallon size bowl
  • 1 giant container or bathtub to hold cabbages while they are brined
  • 1 giant strainer/colander to drain brined cabbages

Directions

  1. Clean cabbage – Clean and cut away any outer leaves that are too damaged, brown or dirty. Most likely, your local market will sell already cleaned cabbages in which case need to do nothing.                     **Make sure you leave some good greenish outer leaves so you can use it to wrap the kimchi at the end.
    Cleaning cabbage for Kimjang kimchi
    Cleaning cabbage for Kimjang kimchi

    Note how large the baechoo is on the left compared to the cleaned and cut ones on the right.

  2. Cut each cabbage in half. Tip for cutting cabbage for Kimchi: just cut about 1/3 of the bottom half (from the root end) and rip apart by hand. Like so –
    How to cut Kimjang cabbage baechoo in half
    How to cut Kimjang cabbage baechoo in half

    It won’t be a huge disaster if you cut it all the way with a knife but it’s just easier this way and also you will not end up wasting cabbage pieces.

  3. In a large container, dissolve about 8 cups of salt and 17 1/2 quarts/70 Cups of cold or lukewarm water for the brine. Reserve remaining 4 cups salt for sprinkling. Please read my Kimjang tips post on discussion about salt. Solar sea salt is best if you can get them.
  4. Put cabbages in brine (made in step 3) – make sure the brine seeps fully into the cabbage by spreading out the leaves with your hands and swirling it around.

    soaking cabbage in brine for Kimchi
    soaking cabbage in brine for Kimchi
  5. Leave cabbages in brine for 2~3 hrs until the leaves start to get soft.
  6. When leaves are soft, For each 1/2 cabbage, REPEAT the following 3 steps:
    1. Take each cabbage out and let it drain for couple seconds and put in a bowl. DO NOT discard the brine because you will be putting cabbages back later on.
    2. Get a handful of salt from the remaining 4 cups and sprinkle (more like spraying) the salt in between leaves of each 1/2 cabbage, starting from the outer leaves.  Aiming the salt mostly on the thick, white fleshy part of the cabbage.
    3. Put salted cabbages back into the brine.
    • Salting cabbage for Kimchi
      Salting cabbage for Kimchi

      ** We do this because the thick white fleshy part takes longer and more salt to pickle. You only need about 1/2 cup or less for each 1/2 cabbage. You may not need to do this if your cabbage has very thin white flesh or if you want to make your kimchi less salty.

7. Let cabbages sit in brine for another 10~12 hrs. Making sure cabbages are evenly pickled by rotating the ones on the top with the ones in the bottom, every 4 hrs or so.

salted cabbage in tub for Kimchi
salted cabbage in tub for Kimchi

8. Next morning, the white part of the cabbage should be fully bendable like so-

soft pickled cabbage
soft pickled cabbage

9. Rinse cabbages 3 times thoroughly. Let cabbages drain for 1 hr or so. Place the cut side down when draining.

Now you are ready to make the seasoning and finish up the Kimchi!

For the list of ingredients and recipe – see my post Kimjang Day: Part 1 – How it’s done.

For more info on ingredients and other tips – see my post Kimjang Day: Part 2 – Ingredients and Tips

Some Kimchi recipes tell you to brine cabbages for 6-8 hrs (at room temp) and this can work well for smaller batches (in fact, that’s what I do in my Easy Blender Kimchi) but traditionally, Kimjang cabbages were pickled overnight in cold winter weather.

In my opinion, brining overnight works better simply in terms of scheduling because you can start brining cabbages at night time and then finish making Kimjang kimchi the next morning. If you brine them for only 6-8 hrs, then you either end up making Kimchi at wee hours of the night or you end up starting the pickling process after midnight.  None of which is fun..

So in my case, I washed and cleaned all the vegetables first during the day and then started pickling the baechoo (cabbage) in our bathtub around 7pm. Which meant I could rinse it around 8 am next morning.

Well, now you have it! With my tips on how to pickle/brine Korean cabbages for Kimchi, you should be able to make a very delicious Kimchi anytime!

About the BRINE:

  • Pickling in 15% salt solution is the traditional standard for Kimchi cabbages. A recent trend is to make it less salty and many Koreans now pickle at 10~12 % salt solution. e.g. If you want to make a 10 cup brine solution, you can mix 8 1/2 C of water and 1 1/2 C salt. This is not an exact formula for making 15% but that’s what many people use to make things simpler and quicker. In this level of salinity, you will only need to pickle the cabbages in 6-8 hrs.
  • Interestingly, in some coastal areas, Koreans pickle their cabbages in sea water instead of making a brine. Note, sea water’s salinity is around 3.5% to 4% which is much lower salinity than our brine so you will need to leave the cabbages much longer – usually a full 24hrs or longer.

Similar Recipes

  • kimjang kimchi
    Kimjang Day: Part 1- How it's done
  • Korean napa cabbage cut in half for Kimjang
    Kimjang Day: Part 2 - Ingredients and Tips
  • photo collage of different Kimchis for 10 kimchi recipes
    10 Kimchi Recipes with Different Vegetables (Part II)
  • cabbage kimchi (yangbaechoo kimchi 양배추 김치)
    Green Cabbage Kimchi (양배추 김치 Yangbaechu Kimchi)
Previous Post
Next Post

Reader Interactions

Leave a Review Cancel reply

I LOVE hearing from you! Submit your question or recipe review here. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rate this recipe:




61 Comments
  1. Cecilia says

    Posted on 18 April 2020 at 11:46 am

    Hi Jinjoo
    Im Cecilia
    I have made some mistake
    I bought too many cabbage to make kimchi
    But i cannot have my gochugaru for another 3-4 days
    I already brine the cabbage in salt and wash
    Where should i keep it before the gochugaru arrive.?
    Thankyouu for answering my problem

    Have a pleasant night

    Reply
    • JinJoo says

      Posted on 18 April 2020 at 12:11 pm

      Oh dear!! Best way is to refrigerate your brined cabbages or keep it as cold as refrigerator temp without freezing. It should be ok for 2-3 days. Good luck!

      Reply
  2. Hannah says

    Posted on 3 April 2019 at 12:11 am

    Hello!
    I made kimchi a few days ago but I’m afraid I didn’t bribe it long enough (I did a dry brine). Some leaves were bendy and some were still crunchy/breakable when I put on the paste and fermented. Will it still be edible or should I just throw it away and start a new batch?

    Reply
    • JinJoo says

      Posted on 3 April 2019 at 12:26 am

      Don’t throw it away – just see how it is. It may still turn out ok or at least some of it should be ok. Good luck!

      Reply
  3. Jackie says

    Posted on 7 August 2018 at 3:20 pm

    Hi! It is my first time making kimchi yesterday, and although it is good and tasty, it’s almost a bit salty. It’s like I can’t eat it alone. I’m pretty sure it’s good to use for kimchi fried rice. Bus it there any way that I can make it less salty? It’s only been fermenting since last night. Will fermentation mellow down the saltiness?

    Also, instead of using the salted fermented shrimp as is, I’ve somehow cooked it with fish sauce just to kill the raw fish smell (coz the family might not like it), cooled it down before making the paste. Was that okay? or is it necessary that I use the raw one in the future? (note: our Saeujeot here is not bottled and just fermented in batches bought at the local public market.

    Is it possible to over-salt the cabbages when brining? Or does it not matter how much salt was used since it’s going to be washed anyway?

    It might be that I’ve used too much salt in brining coz our cabbages are smaller ones here… or too much Saeujeot… not really sure…

    Thanks in advance!

    Reply
    • JinJoo says

      Posted on 7 August 2018 at 4:50 pm

      So it is supposed a bit salty when you taste it before it has fully fermented. But if you’d like to reduce the saltiness, you can do one or more of the following – add a little more sugar or maesil syrup, add fresh radish chunks (to absorb the extra saltiness). And yes, fermentation does definitely mellow down the saltiness too. But adding some radish won’t do you any harm. The raw fish smell will def. go away after it’s fermented so you probably didn’t need to do that. I think it should be OK – honestly I have never made it with cooked fish sauce I am not sure. But you can make Kimchi without fish sauce so I expect that it will be fine. So it is possible to over-salt the cabbages but what’s probably more important is how much of the salt you rinse away. If you let the brined cabbage sit too long in water, it can actually kind of come back to life. If you don’t rinse it thoroughly (usually 3 times is good), the cabbage will taste too salty. Kimchi making (although I try to make a science out of it) is such an art, it is almost impossible to make it come out perfect every time. But unless it taste WAY TOO salty, I would say it should be fine with some extra radish chunks and a bit of sweetener like sugar/pear/persimmon/apple. Good luck!

      Reply
      • Jackie says

        Posted on 7 August 2018 at 8:49 pm

        Thanks so much for the tips! It really is an art and it takes a lot of patience. I’m appreciating kimchi-making more now. Just an update, I was so excited to taste the day old kimchi I made and it did mellow out a bit, so I guess it’ll turn out great after a few more days. I’ve used some for kimchi fried rice for breakfast and it’s divine. I won’t buy store-bought kimchi ever again. I’ll be making more using your recipe and techniques in the future. Again, thank you for replying right away (coz I was so worried I ruined my kimchi).

      • JinJoo says

        Posted on 8 August 2018 at 10:47 am

        Good to hear the happy news! Yes, once you start making your own stuff it’s hard to go back. And the more you make it, the easier it becomes so keep at it and you will become a kimchi master in no time!

  4. 46hillbilly says

    Posted on 27 February 2018 at 9:35 pm

    I found MORTON brand Solar Salt that is from Salt Water and it is clean; have used a pinch as needed in cooking and it is good salt.
    Making a batch of Kimchi with it; will pass on the results.

    Reply
    • JinJoo says

      Posted on 27 February 2018 at 10:47 pm

      Ooh.. yes, please do. I would love to hear how that works out. Is there any harsh taste to it? Does it kind of taste pleasant at the end? Like you want to taste more? Anyway, look forward to hearing from you. Thank you!!

      Reply
  5. Apple Dela Cruz says

    Posted on 17 February 2018 at 6:38 pm

    Jin joo hi! I left the cabbage to drain for too long after soaking it in salt water last night.. it smells bad now. Is it still good to use for my kimchi? the leaves turned slightly brown in the side

    Reply
    • JinJoo says

      Posted on 17 February 2018 at 8:39 pm

      Hi! Hmm.. is it warm where you are? Did you rinse it before you left it to drain? If the temperature is cold,I think it should be ok but if it smells bad and the leaves are mushy – maybe sadly it’s not good. You can also taste a little to see if it taste OK. Should be salty but should taste ok. If it tastes rotten or mushy, then I would not use it. Hope it helps. Thanks for asking!

      Reply
Older Comments
Newer Comments

Primary Sidebar

JinJoo from KimchiMari

Welcome

Hi! I'm JinJoo! Thank you for visiting my Korean Food blog where I share detailed Authentic Korean recipes that even YOU can cook!

My Story

browse by type

gf Gluten Free df Dairy Free pc Pressure Cooker Recipes vg Vegan lc low carb <30 30min or less kf Kid-Friendly ls low-salt
  • by Course
    • Drinks
    • Soup+Stew
    • Appetizers
    • Salads
    • Main Dishes
    • Side Dishes
    • Desserts and Snacks
  • by Ingredient
    • Beef
    • Chicken
    • Pork
    • Seafood
    • Rice
    • Noodles
    • Tofu
    • Vegetables
    • Egg
    • Paste/Sauces
  • by Korean Basics
    • Eumryo 음료
    • Bap 밥
    • Bokkeum 볶음
    • Gui 구이
    • Guk 국
    • Hangwa 한과
    • Jang 장
    • Jeon 전
    • Jeongol 전골
    • Jjigae 찌게
    • Jjim 찜
    • Jorim 조림
    • Kimchi 김치
    • Myeon 면
    • Namul 나물
    • Tteok 떡
  • by Type
    • Easy Meals
    • 30 Minutes or Less
    • Kid-Friendly
    • Lunchboxes
    • Condiments and Sauces
    • Cooking for One
    • Street food
    • Pressure Cooker Recipes
Free Korean BBQ Favorites ebook
free recipe book!

Join to get my FREE cookbook + monthly newsletters + recipe updates!

join now!

Nutritional facts, MSG & gluten free

Nutritional Facts in my recipe cards are provided PER SERVING and it’s an estimate and may not be accurate. Due to different brands of ingredients having different nutritional values, the values I provide here may be different from your preparation.

– Gluten-Free recipe assumes you are using gluten-free soy sauce (since many soy sauces contain gluten or wheat) and/or gluten-free gochujang.

– MSG & Corn Syrup FREE – these are never used in my recipes

Opens in a new window Opens an external site Opens an external site in a new window
baked chicken on parchment paper with onions caramelized

닭고기

Chicken

소고기

Beef

Spicy Pork BBQ - Korean Pork Bulgogi

돼지고기

Pork

Garlic Scape Stir Fry with Shrimp (Maneuljjong Bokkeum 마늘쫑 볶음)

해산물

Seafood

Soondubu Jjigae or Soft Tofu Stew

두부

Tofu

곡식

Rice

READER FAVORITES

Trending Now

Mini Kimbap tray - kimbap two ways

Mini Kimbap (Mayak Kimbap) with Carrot or Cucumber

Chicken Bulgogi Rice

Easy Chicken Bulgogi (Dak Bulgogi) for Korean BBQ

After stew has boiled for 15 min with cheese melted on top

Budae Jjigae (Korean Army Stew)

Korean Sweet Pancake - Hotteok/Hodduck (호떡) www.kimchimari.com

Hotteok (호떡)- Korean Sweet Dessert Pancake

featured on
ny times logo
  • COOK
    • Recipe Index
    • Pantry Items
    • Videos
  • LEARN
    • Starter Guide
    • Korean How To’s
    • Travel
join the kimchimari family
Receive Free Cookbook and New Recipes by Email
join now
  • Back to Top
  • About
  • Contact
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy
© 2025 Site Credits Designed by Melissa Rose Design Developed by Once Coupled

free recipe ebook!

Get my FREE cookbook + newsletters + lessons!
Choose all that you wish!
Thank you for subscribing!
  • 291