Rampchi Or Kimchi Made With Ramps

This post is about a month too late. I figure I’ll just post it for next spring when the ramps pop up again after a long winter. Ramp season is tragically short and my love of them is so deep that I figured I needed to find a way to preserve them to eat throughout the summer and possibly fall. I’ve heard of pickled ramps and I’m sure I’m not the first person to kimchi them, but I haven’t seen a recipe out there.

One of my favorites kind of kimchi is a scallion kimchi or pa kimchi. I love all alliums but I top most of my dishes with the green variety- scallions, chives, garlic chives, etc. While modern agriculture has made all of these accessible at all times of the year, ramps are the one kind of onion I wait all year to get my hands on. Its appearance at the market marks the beginning of spring, warm weather, allergy season and exorbitant prices at the farmers market. But I bite the bullet and buy a lovely little bunch of these every time. Why? The flavor is delicate, the vegetable itself is beautiful and the season is fleeting. By now they’ve probably disappeared from any farmers markets here in the DC area.

However, if you find any particularly thin green onions those will work, too. And I bet there’s some sort of garlic chive kimchi recipe out there somewhere.

You must first wilt the ramps in some fish sauce. Some of the recipes for scallion kimchi call for making a paste out of sweet rice flour and water. I skipped that step and just rubbed the chili powder, garlic and ginger paste evenly onto the ramps. Let it sit in an airtight container for a day or two on your kitchen counter and then store it in the fridge. This kimchi will last you several months and will taste great on a cold noodle dish, as a side dish with some rice and bulgogi, or maybe a in kimchi fried rice.

And speaking of cold noodle dishes, head over to A Creative DC today to check out a feature on Ginger and Toasted Sesame and to get a recipe for spicy cold noodles featuring rampchi! A Creative DC is a new site that features people from the DC creative community and all the projects they’re working on in our diverse, vibrant, and growing city. I know I’ve personally discovered a lot of artists through the site and its beautiful Instagram feed (and check out everything tagged #acreativedc).

Print

Rampchi

Prep Time

1 hr 5 mins

Total Time

1 hr 5 mins

 

The more this rampchi gets to mellow out in the fridge the tastier it will become and the flavor of the ramps will become less sharp. Try it as a side dish to a Korean meal as you would any kimchi. If it gets too sour with time, give it a quick stir fry with vegetables or try it in fried rice.

Author: Sonja Bradfield

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound of ramps thorough cleaned and roots trimmed
• 1/4 cup of fish sauce
• 1/4 cup of Korean chili powder
• 3 inch piece of ginger peeled
• 6 garlic cloves smashed and peeled

Instructions

1. Lay the ramps evenly in a casserole that is large enough to fit the ramps.
2. Pour 1/4 cup of the fish sauce over the ramps and turn the ramps in the pan so that each one is evenly coated in the sauce. Let the ramps marinade in the sauce, turning every 20 minutes or so until they are wilted.
3. Drain the fish sauce and pour into a food processor and pulse together with chili powder, ginger and garlic.
4. Evenly coat all the ramps in the red chili mixture and store in an air tight container with a bit of room at the top.
5. Store at room temperature for at least 24 hours and then store in the fridge.