Perilla Kimchi

I LOVE perilla!!  It's great when eating grilled pork belly saam!! Mmmmm....pork belly. Instead of using lettuce to wrap the pork belly, I just use straight perilla. This year, I grew way too much, which isn't that hard. I recently killed 3 of 7  plants because I was picking tons of perilla on a daily basis.  I ended up with a ginormous bag...

I also had leftover kimchi sauce from making napa kimchi (see previous post) so this was the perfect way to preserve all of the perilla and use up the sauce that's been sitting around in my fridge for a month.

This recipe is a bit labor intensive because each perilla leaf has to be individually sauced before placing in a jar/container.

Even though I used leftover kimchi sauce, I used this recipe: Perilla Kimchi to brine the perillas.  This site also has a recipe to make the kimchi sauce.  I also had so much perilla that I doubled the brining recipe. Make sure your perillas still have stems.  It makes it so much easier to manipulate the leaves.

Brine the perillas as per recipe...

I highly recommend using chop sticks when handling the perillas.

Spoon some of the sauce on top of the last leaf. Seal the jar. Allow the jar to sit for an hour or 2 before putting it in the fridge. Enjoy with a lot of rice and Korean beef  BBQ or even better.... grilled pork belly!!