Kimchi Redux

This is an update* to a previous post.

Substitutions/Additions

• I swapped out the tablespoon of fish sauce for another tablespoon of rice wine vinegar. I'm kind of in love with rice wine vinegar right now. Also, I felt like the original batch of kimchi was a tad too fishy (from all that fish sauce!).
• I finally located Korean red pepper**, so I decided to jumble up the hot stuff. I went with 1/4 cup of the Korean pepper and 1 tablespoon of Sriracha sauce. I'm not entirely sure which version came out hotter, though the previous version definitely had more "late" heat than this one (probably owing to the small Thai chilis. Those bastards are sneaky.)

How did it work?

I was a little worried that the first batch wasn't fermenting hard enough. I decided to wait for this one to start rocking before moving it into the fridge, even if it meant going to 3-4 days of closet-fermentation. As it turned out, the thing was ripping along at 2 days flat, so I transfered it to the fridge at that point.

I've only had a taste of this batch, but so far so good. I'm hoping to integrate the kimchi into some cooked dishes, so we'll see how that works. I'm still missing that "electric" sort of tingle that comes off of really good kimchi (like at Koreana, for instance). I'm not entirely sure how one gets the electric taste, but I'm open to suggestions (Longer fermentation? More daikon? Magic beans?).

*I swung by the Super 88 grocery store in Allston to gather some ingredients for another project (details forthcoming, I promise). I couldn't help but notice their giant, incredibly cheap heads of Napa cabbage. I also managed to find the largest daikon radish I've ever seen. Seriously.

**Another sweet find at the Super 88!