Posted on 07/25/2018 4:11:39 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For most Koreans,” says Yena Lee, of the South Korean Cultural Heritage Administration, “real kimchi is homemade kimchi, preferably made by their mothers.” When autumn slides into winter, making the spicy fermented vegetable dish becomes especially important in South Korea. After Chuseok, the fall harvest holiday, many Korean families set aside a weekend in late November or early December for kimjang, the practice in which near-industrial quantities of pogi kimchi (the most common kind, made with napa cabbage) are made in homes across the country to sustain Koreans through the cold months.
Kimjang season is so important to Korean life that, in 2013, it was enshrined in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Some 230 tons of the foodstuff are eaten each year in South Korea, the UN reports—and of that, barely seven percent is commercially produced. “Koreans are really picky about their kimchi,” says Elijah Park, a Korean-American now living in Brooklyn. “So it’s like—you can’t really fake it.”
To make pogi kimchi, chopped napa cabbage, daikon, and other vegetables are coated with a red paste made of sugar, chili pepper, oyster sauce, and tiny fermented shrimps. Garlic, ginger, and scallions add even more flavor. Traditionally, the mix is packed into earthenware pots, covered with brine, and buried in the ground to regulate the temperature as it ferments. Today, it’s more commonly loaded into jars or bins and placed in a considerably more high-tech kimchi fridge. The result—intensely savory, sweet, spicy, and sour, fizzing with lactic acid—has soared in popularity in the United States as well, where it was touted as a health food following the 1988 Olympics in Seoul....
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
My mouth still burns - from fifty years ago....
I’ve been known to make some kimchi. good stuff.
I love kimchi, hard to find it tho.
I tried kimchi several times, and finally determined that I will never acquire that taste. Ever.
Supposedly fermented food is good for you - I’ve tried kimchi but prefer Bubbies Sauerkraut.
It’s an acquired taste that I am glad I acquired. The trick was getting past the smell, it tastes nothing like it smells, at least for me with the good stuff at the Asian market.
Freegards
In Burlington and Cambridge there are H-Marts (Korean full sized grocery stores) are you close to one of those?
My Mother-in-Law is Japanese and makes Kimchi and I love it. My wife thinks I am an alien as she can’t stand the stuff. She won’t make it so I have to go to a large international food market one county north to buy some good Kimchi.
Kimchi salute!
What's the distinction between fermented and spoiled?
Intention.
Haha, umm, the former doesn’t put you in the hospital?
As for the decomposing shrimp, were you aware that the original A1 steak sauce had anchovies dissolved in vinegar as an ingredient?
If there is a trader joes near you, they have it. Also costco, industrial-sized.
I like it but don’t often have the hankering for it. It has a bite and squeak to it, unlike all the wilted, sulfurous sauerkraut ever offered to me.
Beer and swill.
Easiest way to make it homemade for beginners is the perfect pickler kit available on Amazon.
To supercharge its natural enzymes to combat adrenal burnout ferment with mixed natural salts, sea, pink, Hawaiian etc.
To boost its probiotic effect mix with sour cream as a chip dip.
To combat candida, IBD and colitis drink homemade milk kiefir with it.
Korean kimchi kiddie pool family binding?
Is that like Chinese foot binding?
Doesn't the vinegar (pickling) preserve it so it won't decompose?
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