If you love making kimchi but have no room for a shelf of jars, kimchi in a vacuum bag is a brilliant answer. The bag saves space, keeps the air out, and lets you ferment smaller batches so you can tweak the spice and saltiness to your own taste.
The method is genuinely simple, so it suits anyone making their own kimchi at home for the first time. I will walk you through packing, sealing and how to tell when it is ready.
For a jar version, see my classic Cucumber Kimchi.
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Pin itA Little About Kimchi
Kimchi is Korea’s most famous ferment, and there is not just one of it. Napa cabbage is the classic, but you will find versions made with radish (kkakdugi), cucumber (oi kimchi) or spring onion (pa kimchi), and a milder chilli-free white kimchi too. Every region, and really every family, has its own recipe.
The idea is an old one: long before fridges, Koreans packed vegetables away to ferment through the winter, and that same simple method is what we are doing here in the vacuum bags. It keeps beautifully and works in everything from a bowl of rice to a bubbling stew.
Why I Came to Kimchi from Sauerkraut
I grew up around fermenting rather than reading about it. My babcia kept a barrel of sauerkraut on the farm and a cellar full of jars, and the cellar was usually flooded, so you walked out along boards to reach the shelves. To a small boy that was the best room in the house.
Kimchi was the obvious next thing. It works the same way as sauerkraut, salt and time and a vegetable held under its own liquid, and it gives you far more to play with: the chilli, the garlic, the ginger and the fish sauce all move, and the same cabbage tastes different every fortnight. The bags came later, when I wanted to make a batch small enough to eat before it got too sour.
Salting the Cabbage: Rinse It or Keep It?
When making Kimchi, you have two primary salting techniques for cabbage: dry salting and brining. I suggest trying both to discern the flavour and preparation differences:
- A little salt, no rinsing. This is what my recipe does. The salt goes straight onto the cut cabbage, about 2% of its weight, and it stays there: it pulls the water out, seasons the leaves right through and then becomes the seasoning of the finished kimchi. Nothing is washed away, so the amount you put on is the amount you eat.
- A lot of salt, then rinsed off. This is the traditional route and the one most Korean cooks use. The cabbage is soaked in cold water first, then salted heavily by hand, stems more than leaves, and left for about four hours with a turn halfway. Maangchi uses something like two and a half cups of salt to eight pounds of cabbage, which sounds alarming until you get to the last step: it is rinsed three times in cold water, so most of that salt never reaches the jar. Some cooks dissolve the salt in water and soak the cabbage in that instead; either way it is washed afterwards. And the soak is not a fussy extra, it is what makes the salting quick, because dry cabbage takes far longer to take up salt.
Traditionally the cabbage was salted overnight at home, not for days. What has changed is where people live: a flat has no room to salt a winter’s worth of cabbage, so in Korea the rural cooperatives and farmhouses took the job on and now sell it ready-salted to city kitchens, to be rinsed and seasoned at home. It is the same problem this recipe solves from the other end.
Not sure how much salt to use? My fermentation brine calculator does both, in grams and spoons: salt as a percentage of the vegetable for this recipe, or as a percentage of the water if you are making up a brine.
How to Make Kimchi in Vacuum Bags, Step by Step
Full quantities are in the recipe card below. The vacuum bag is what makes this method worth doing: nothing to burp, no brine creeping over a jar rim, and the cabbage stays under its own juices from day one.
- Salt the cabbage and leave it. Cut it into thirds, mix it thoroughly with the salt and let it sit. This pulls the water out and seasons it right through, and it is what stops the finished kimchi being watery later. Taste it before you go any further: if it is harshly salty, give it an extra rinse and drain it well, because there is no fixing salt once the paste is on.
- Mix the paste. Minced ginger and garlic, sugar, fish sauce and Korean red pepper flakes, worked into a paste. Use gochugaru rather than a generic chilli powder: it is milder and fruitier than most, and something hotter will simply burn. Two tablespoons gives the mild, everyday version; go to four if you want it properly strong.
- Squeeze, then combine. Wring the liquid out of the cabbage and work the paste through it. Wear gloves. Chilli paste finds every small cut on your hands and stays there for hours.
- Divide it between the bags. Equal amounts, so every bag ferments at the same rate, and press the cabbage down as you seal so it sits under its own liquid. Anything left poking up into an air pocket is the bit that spoils.
- Double-seal and leave at room temperature. Seal each bag twice, then keep them somewhere shaded in the kitchen. Fermentation makes gas, so the bags will swell: that is the sign it is working, not a fault. Kimchi ferments to your taste rather than to the clock, so open one and try a little each day.
- Move them to the fridge the moment the tang is right for you. The cold slows everything right down and the kimchi carries on developing slowly from there, getting sourer and better for weeks.
Recipe Card for Kimchi in Vacuum Bags
Kimchi in Vacuum Bags
How to ferment kimchi in vacuum-sealed bags instead of jars: less space, no weights, and the same gochugaru, garlic and fish sauce base.
Equipment I Use
Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the cabbage into thirds and place them in a large container. Add the salt and mix thoroughly. Allow the cabbage to sit for approximately 3 hours, or until it becomes soft, stirring occasionally every hour.
In a separate bowl, combine the minced ginger & garlic, sugar, fish sauce, and Korean red pepper flakes. Mix well to form a paste. Add in the sliced green onions, julienned daikon radish and carrot. Mix until all ingredients are well-combined.
Once the cabbage is ready, squeeze the liquid out and mix it with the Kimchi paste (Wear gloves)
Divide the Kimchi equally into vacuum sealer bags.
Using a vacuum sealer, securely double-seal the bags. Store them in a shaded area of your kitchen at room temperature. After a day the kimchi tastes light and fresh, and by 3 days it should be properly sour. Taste it and move it to the fridge once it is how you like it.
After the initial fermentation, move the bags to the refrigerator. The cold will slow down the fermentation, and the kimchi will continue to develop its flavours over time.
Chef’s notes
- The salt stays in. It is 2% of the weight of the cabbage and, unlike most kimchi recipes, it is never rinsed off, so what you put on is what you eat. Taste a piece before the paste goes anywhere near it. If it is harshly salty, give it a quick rinse and drain it hard, because there is no fixing salt once the paste is on.
- Press it flat as you seal. Push the cabbage down so it sits under its own liquid right across the bag. Anything left poking up into an air pocket is the bit that spoils.
- Swelling is the ferment working. The bags will puff up and that is the sign you want, not a fault. If one goes drum-tight, snip a corner, let the gas out and seal it again.
- If a bag leaks, move it. The kimchi is fine, but the liquid is what protects it, so tip it into a fresh bag or a jar and press it back under. Do not just wipe the outside and leave it.
Nutrition per serving
Check out my other recipes:
What to Serve With Kimchi
🍽 For me kimchi is happiest straight from the jar as a cold side dish next to a bowl of steaming rice, and it earns its place at any Korean-style barbecue alongside grilled meat. Once it turns properly sour it becomes a cooking ingredient in its own right, stirred into a bubbling kimchi stew, fried up with day-old rice in a fried rice, or folded into a savoury pancake batter. I also love a good spoonful piled onto fried or scrambled eggs, or tucked into a toasted cheese sandwich for a bit of tang.
FAQ for Korean Kimchi in Vacuum Bags
What if my vacuum-sealed bag inflates during fermentation?
Some gas production is normal during fermentation. If the bag inflates, it’s a sign of active fermentation. However, if it inflates too much, you might want to release some gas to prevent the bag from bursting (Never happened to me yet.)
How do I know if my kimchi has spoiled?
Signs of spoilage include an off or rotten smell, mould growth, or an unusually sour taste. Always inspect the bags for any leaks or indications of spoilage.
What if I don’t have a vacuum sealer?
If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can still make kimchi using traditional methods in jars or containers. The vacuum-sealed method offers a unique approach, but it’s not the only way to enjoy kimchi.
How long should I ferment kimchi and how do I know it’s ready?
Leave it at room temperature for one to three days. After a day it tastes light and fresh, and by three days it should be properly sour. Somewhere cool, around 15-22°C, gives the cleanest flavour, and a warm kitchen gets there faster. Once it tastes how you like it, move it to the fridge to slow everything right down.
How long does homemade kimchi keep in the fridge?
Kept cold and pressed down under its own brine, kimchi will happily last a couple of months, and often much longer. It never really “goes off” so much as it keeps getting more sour and soft with age. The flavour and texture shift over time, so eat the fresher batches raw and save the older, funkier kimchi for cooking.
My kimchi has gone very sour. Can I still use it?
Absolutely, sour kimchi is a gift rather than a problem. That deep, tangy funk is exactly what you want for kimchi stew, kimchi fried rice, or pancakes, where a fresh, mild batch would taste flat. The heat of cooking mellows the sharpness and turns it into something rich and savoury.
Do I need to thicken the paste with rice flour?
No, this card does not use one and it works fine without it. Some Korean recipes cook a small rice-flour porridge (or plain flour, if that is what you have) into the paste first: it helps the paste cling to the cabbage and gives the fermentation something extra to feed on. It carries no seasoning of its own, though, so if you add a full-sized batch of it you will thin out the chilli, garlic and fish sauce along with it. Keep it small, a couple of tablespoons of flour in well under a cup of water, rather than trying to scale the rest of the paste up to match.
Pin itA Few Words from the Chef
Kimchi is the one thing on this site where I would genuinely rather hear what you did than tell you what I did. Everyone lands on a different point between fresh and sour, and everyone has a moment they decided was ready. Tell me how long you left yours out, and what you ended up eating it with.
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