Persimmon Kimchi, Best Thing to Make When You Have Too Many

Persimmon Kimchi is a sweet and spicy alternative to the usual cabbage kimchi, using Fall's new favorite fruit, persimmons! With only a few ingredients and no long fermentation, Persimmon Kimchi is so easy to make, you'll only be able to stop eating it when persimmons go out of season. Shall we?

_{updated November 2025, originally posted February 2007}

Explore More

• Can You Make Kimchi Out of Persimmons?
• What Ingredients You Need for Persimmon Kimchi
• Which Persimmons Do You Use for Kimchi-like Salad?
• What's the Best Way to Cut Persimmons for Kimchi?
• How to Make Persimmon Kimchi
• Persimmon Kimchi Recipe
• Pro Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

Can You Make Kimchi Out of Persimmons?

Yes! I wasn't kidding when I said you can make kimchi out of virtually anything, and that includes persimmons. Now technically, though we're calling "kimchi," Persimmon Kimchi is more like a highly seasoned, very spicy salad because it doesn't go under any real fermentation. In fact,

This Persimmon... Kimchi? Or is it a spicy salad? Maybe some kind of Korean banchan appetizer thing? Whatever you call it, it's a combination of sweet persimmons, peppery paper-thin sliced onions, and a supremely saucy flavorful seasoning that's garlicky, salty, and most importantly, spicy. I wasn't kidding when I said this Persimmon Kimchi is my current hyperfixation, one of like, oh, three dishes I have been making on. the. daily. for the last few weeks. At first it's fresh and crunchy like a slaw, and the longer you let it sit in the tangy, vinegary dresing, it become slightly pickled, almost like a carrot kimchi.

Best Kimchi Recipes With Non-Traditional Ingredients

• Apple Kimchi
• Brussels Sprouts Kimchi, basically mini cabbages!
• Green Cabbage Kimchi
• Watermelon Rind Kimchi
• Easy Homemade Kimchi, the original, traditional cabbage kimchi

What Ingredients You Need for Persimmon Kimchi

Persimmon Kimchi fresh/refrigerator ingredients:

• Fuyu persimmons, 1 pound (2-3 depending on size)
• Onion, red or white, ¼ sliced lengthwise and soaked in cold water for 10 minutes
• Green onion, 1 stalk, cut into 2-inch pieces
• Garlic, 1 clove, finely minced
• Ginger, ½ teaspoon fresh grated

Persimmon Kimchi dry/pantry ingredients:

• Gochugaru, 1 tablespoon plus more for more heat
• Apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons
• Sea salt, 2 teaspoons
• Fish sauce, 1 teaspoon

Hachiya persimmons, the larger, acorn-shaped ones pictured above on the right, are only good when spoonably super-soft, and are not appropriate for slicing and making kimchi.

What's the Best Way to Cut Persimmons for Kimchi?

There are a few different ways to cut persimmons to make kimchi. This version uses thin slices that look like moons. Not only do these slices show off the star pattern inside, they are easier to pick up with chopsticks, and can wrap around a bite of rice the same way a leaf of cabbage kimchi does.

You can also dice the persimmon into cubes, similar to radish kimchi / kkak-du-gi / 깍두기. These are harder to pick up with chopsticks, imho, but great for spoons!

Remove the petals and stem from the top and peel. Sit the persimmon down on the cutting board, then cut in half lengthwise from top to bottom. Make ⅛-inch wide slices using one of the following methods.

Use a Mandoline-Easiest Way (for Me)

The easiest way I've found to slice persimmons is using a mandoline. Holding the persimmon from it stem end upright, slice on the mandoline. Make sure to use the safety guard because peeled persimmons are very slippery!

Use a Very Sharp Chef's Knife

You can also use a very sharp chef's knife. Place a half cut side down on cutting board and carefully slice.

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

This recipe for Persimmon Kimchi is easily vegan/vegetarian-adaptable by substituting in vegan fish sauce (usually made with mushrooms) for the regular fish sauce.

Gochugaru: Gochugaru is a bright red Korean chili pepper powder made from a specific variety of Korean chili pepper. Its heat level ranges, but gochugaru is generally considered a medium spicy chili powder. Look for gochugaru that is made from Korean peppers that are sun-dried, and for this recipe specifically, a coarse grind, or flakes, not a fine powder. You can find gochugaru in Korean grocery stores like H-Mart and other Asian grocery stores. I have also seen some independent, new-ish spice companies like this and this at Whole Foods. This organic brand and the one in the photo above, purchased at HMart, are currently what I have in my pantry.

Fish sauce: This brand has been my favorite for years available at Whole Foods if you can't get to an Asian market, and this one I've tried recently and like, too!

Onions, garlic, and all other fresh herbs and produce from either theSanta Monica Farmers' Marketon Wednesday, or Whole Foods Market.

How to Make Persimmon Kimchi

Pro Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

Hard persimmons. Make sure you are using FUYU persimmons, the squat round firm persimmons, and actually better if they are almost rock hard like an apple when you pick them up or tap them on the countertop.

Peel the Persimmons. The skin of persimmons is totally edible, but I prefer the silky texture of the fruit to be uninterrupted in kimchi.

Smaller Persimmons will make slices that are more manageable to eat in one bite. You can also use larger persimmons and cut the slices even further into quarters that look like pie pieces.

Wear gloves. Your hands are the best way to mix the kimchi seasoning in between the slices, which have a tendency to stick together, but because the red pepper powder can stain, gloves will protect your hands!

Wear dark clothes or an apron. The gochugaru in the kimchi seasoning can stain, so wear dark clothes or an apron!

Is Persimmon Kimchi Healthy?

Yes! Persimmon Kimchi is super healthy! Depending on your health needs and dietary considerations, of course. To be honest, I can't really think of a case in which Persimmon Kimchi would not be healthy, unless maybe spice or acid from the light fermentation causes heartburn or other gastric issue for you.

Dietary Considerations of Persimmon Kimchi

As published, this recipe for Persimmon Kimchi is:

• pescatarian (uses fish sauce)
• dairy-free
• gluten-free/wheat-free
• grain-free
• sugar-free

Tools and Equipment

There isn't any special tool or piece of equipment that is absolutely required for this Persimmon Kimchi recipe. You can make it using a sharp chef's knife on a sturdy cutting board to prep the persimmons and vegetables! However, that isn't to say there are a few tools that might make it slightly easier to get from persimmons on your counter to your chopsticks!

• Chef's knife, my personal workhorse
• Mandoline
• Wooden cutting board, oversized
• Glass mixing bowls
• Mini ¼-cup liquid measuring cup
• Glass storage container with airtight lids, perfect size for storing
• Glass mason jars, wide mouth because they're easier to use and wash
• Mason jar lids that are better than those horrible 2-piece metal lids

Best Spicy Banchan and Korean-ish Side Dishes

• Oi Muchim, Korean Spicy Cucumbers
• Spicy Korean Radish Salad, Mu-saeng-chae
• Radish Kimchi, Kkak-du-gi
• Korean Carrot Salad, a carrot banchan

Korean Vegetable Side Dishes

• Sesame Broccoli Banchan
• Spicy Cucumber and Avocado Salad
• Garlicky Spinach, Shigeumchi Namul
• Soy Sauce Pickles

Food for Afterthoughts

Why must people automatically assume that if a woman happens to be Asian, she will be “thin?” Why do they have to think that all Asian women are born with a high metabolism? As if calorie-burn rates were somehow linked to the genetic make-up of the entire Mongoloid race?

Why the superficial stereotype, people, why?!

It’s just not true.

Not all Asian women are skinny, svelte things with glossiferously sleek ebony hair that frames a perfect, procelain complexion.

And Mongoloid is just a dirty word.

I’m Asian (only on the outside, I tell you!), and my hair is not ebony gloss. My skin isn’t like a China doll’s. I’m not “skinny.”

For God’s sake, I’m a blogger. My hair glitters with grease because I haven’t washed it in days. My skin isn’t pearlescent porcelain, it’s pasty because the only light it ever sees is not that of day, but of the tender glow on my laptop screen, and skinny? Not only am I blogger, I’m a food blogger. I may look thin-ish, seated, from desk-height up with my muscleless arms, but I have fallen victim to something called Bloggerass 2.0, which was fka EverSpread, because even B.B. (that’s “Before Blogging” for the laypeople) I had a double-wide from sitting on my marketing butt all day long.

Now I sit on my butt all day along and don’t get paid for it.

Asian people can be skinny...if they eat within the diet of their mongoloid ancestors. Korean people can be skinny...if they eat a tiny bowl of bahp (steamed rice) with kimchee, tofu, and a broiled fish for which they have to work so hard to avoid pin bones that they end up eating almost none of it.

Monsieur Marcel is a cafe. I am not educated in the strata-spheric definitions of various French restaurant types, but I am willing to risk my intelligence authority on nothing by saying that a café is more casual than, say, a bistro. Morels, inside the three-ringed by faux trolly tracks circus that is shopping chaos known as The Grove, is a bistro and serves food food that requires proletariat forks. On the other plebeian hand, Monsier Marcel is a café and requires nothing more than grubby hands that have been sifting through the racks at Anthropologie.

This Korean-French girl is getting fat, and it’s all in thanks to that big, silly cock. Monsieur Marcel is Frounsh and I am pretty damned sure that French people don't get fat because they eat fat-free plain yogurt, drink Champagne and pawn off their cheese-laden souffles, lobules of fatty liver held tenuously together with nothing more than veins, and enormous buttery croissants to stupid Korean people like me. And we don't even get "Champagne." We get "sparkling wine," kind of like the way the little kids get "sparkling cider."