Oversalted and too matured kimchi (like sauerkraut)?

I have quite a bit of experience making homemade kimchee.

There are two distinct stages, for me, where salt is used. The first is the initial salting/wilting phase. The cabbage leaves are heavily salted and left to sit, some recipes call for pressing under weight, others do not.

Then there is the "stuffing" that flavors the kimchee - chives, scallion, garlic, salted shrimps (if you use them), hot pepper powder, etc, along with..... some salt.

Before the cabbage is stuffed with or mixed with the "stuffing," there is another step.

The cabbage gets pressed to get excess water out, then thoroughly rinsed to get all that salt off, and drained of excess water. THEN the stuffing goes in and the kimchee is allowed to ferment/pickle.

I suspect that you aren't rinsing away the original salt you use to draw the moisture out from the cabbage and jump-start the pickling process.

So.... now you have well-aged kimchee that is a lot more sour than the normal "eating" kimchee. What to do?

One fantastic dish that requires over-soured kimchee is the kimchee stew, aka Kimchee Chigae. Traditional recipes call are made with kimchee, scallion, sesame oil, tofu, and pork belly. Since Koreans have a particular passion for Spam, my mom always made it for us with spam instead of pork belly. If you're worried about the salt level, you can give it a little bit of a rinse, since the hot and the sour is what's needed for the stew.

If the kimchee is particularly salty, then you would not want to substitute Spam for unsmoked, uncured pork belly. You might also want to hold off adding soy sauce until the end (recipes usually call for a little bit) and reduce the amount or use a low-sodium variety (never, ever thought I'd recommend that), after tasting it. I always eat the stew mixed with a lot of rice, so a little bit strong or salty is not a major issue.

Just Google "kimchee chigae recipe." Also, I'd strongly advise cooking outdoors or at least in a well-ventilated kitchen. Simmering a kimchee stew is obviously going to come with a certain amount of odor.

There are so many "recipes" for kimchi. My style is mak kimchi, where the napa cabbage is sliced into ~1" squares. The way I learned: salt the cabbage, let it set for at least 2 hours or even overnight, then rinse the cabbage three times, changing the water each time. If you taste the wilted cabbage at this point, it is vaguely salty. Next, I add the rest of the ingredients. If I add fish sauce, I use a small amount to avoid too much saltiness. Then, I pack the crock. I ferment at room temperature for about a week, or until the bubbles slow down, and then ferment for a month or more in a refrigerator. I liked the low amount of salt in my kimchi, so I started rinsing my sauerkraut before packing it in the crock, and I like it much better with low salt. I only ferment in the winter, when the house temperature is below 70 degrees F. I use an airlock on my crock. I think you can make adjustments for the next batches based on your experience this time. If you follow the basic idea, it is okay to modify the recipe.