Korean Radish Kimchi Recipe (KKakdugi)

Sharing is caring!

This spicy Korean Radish Kimchi is salty, crunchy, and oh-so-satisfying, with gut-healthy probiotics and ingredients that boost your metabolism! Find out how to make this simple kkakdugi kimchi yourself!

Korean Radish Kimchi Recipe

Also known in Korean as “kkakdugi”, this kimchi uses cubed daikon rather than the standard cabbage kimchi. This side dish, or banchan, is great served alongside fattier Asian meals, such as Spicy Korean Pork Belly.

This post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. That means that if you make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products or services that I fully believe in and use myself. Read more here.

Types of kimchi

The most common is probably cabbage kimchi, which you can find at most Asian grocery stores.

However, my very favorite kimchi is kkakdugi, the spicy radish kimchi, as it has more of a satisfying “crunch” than the cabbage variety.

There are several variations of radish kimchi. Some variations use more sugar. Others incorporate shrimp. This was the recipe I used when I first started making kimchi, which I then changed up a bit to suit my taste.

Can kids eat kimchi?

Because this is our family kimchi recipe, I have purposely made it a little milder and slightly less sweet…my whole family love this stuff, including my 3-year-old and 5-year-old!

They actually beg for it when I have a jar in the fridge. I would have never guessed in million years that kimchi would be one of my kids favorite foods, but there you go!

So the answer is, yes, kids absolutely can enjoy eating this radish kimchi! Even my kids who don’t like spicy food in gerneral gobble this stuff down!

Radish kimchi health benefits.

Because it is fermented, it contains bacteria and probiotics that aid in digestion and gut health. Purportedly, it also has such benefits as lowering cholesterol, helping one to lose weight, preventing certain cancers, etc.

To make Korean Radish Kimchi you will need:

Here are the ingredients you need to make radish kimchi.

Ingredients:

• 2-2.5 lbs daikon
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1/2 a red apple
• 1/2 small brown onion
• 3Tbsp fish sauce
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 2 Tbsp + 2 Tbsp gochugaru (FYI, this is a pound of it!)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 Tbsp rice flour

You are also going to need to have the following appliances and tools:

Tools:

• Airtight jar (I used an old kimchi jar that looks exactly like this; DO NOT use plastic)
• Colander
• Food processor
• Several bowls of varying sizes
• Food safe vinyl gloves

Authentic Korean recipes use raw sugar and rock salt, but because I like to keep things simple, I just use regular old Morton salt and white sugar. I have never had a complaint about the taste of my kimchi 😉

Preparing the radish kimchi base

When you are preparing the spicy kimchi base paste, you will first mix the rice flour into the water and microwave.

Before microwaving it will look like this:

After microwaving it will look like this.

Start with the first stated amount of time on the microwave and increase in small increments until you get a gooey consistency.

The secret to good radish kimchi

One key factor in making great radish kimchi is to make sure you get as much water out of the daikon as possible.

This is achieved by coating the cubed daikon in a salt/sugar mixture for an hour, which through the process of osmosis will draw the water out of the daikon. *Woohoo for science!*

Look how much water came out of my daikon from the salt soak!

Removing water from radish kimchi

After the salt/sugar soak, you need to rinse the excess salt and sugar off of the daikon with cool water. You will still need to try and squeeze out as much water as possible out following that step.

My trick is to place it in a colander over a deep mixing bowl and use another bowl to push down GENTLY to squeeze out the excess water.

Gently is the key word here.

I was still able to get quite a bit of water out of my daikon with this extra step.

Separating the gochugaru

Also, you will notice that I had you separate the 4 Tbsp of gochugaru into 2 + 2 Tbsp.

The first 2 Tbsp will be mixed into the spicy base paste and the second into the daikon itself.

Now you are ready to make some awesome kimchi.

Make sure you share with you non-kimchi-loving friends to convert them into kimchi lovers 🙂

Pin it for Later!

Sharing is caring!