I wrote a guest post for the Amateur Gourmet’s new community blog. Check it out.
This isn’t the first time Adam Roberts and I have crossed paths. Way back, I made a tribute post to his comic book send ups, called “The Amateur Kimchi,” and it got a little bit noticed.
Can you believe that this was Eun Jeong’s first time making kimchi?
I’ve already made kimchi three times in the past couple of years. Back when I made my Zen’s Signature Kimchi two years ago, she discouraged me from doing so because it was a lot of work.
So, I don’t know where she got this bug to make it this year. And, no, we’re not expecting. It’s now Kimjang, the kimchi making season. We were supposed to do it together this weekend, but brining the cabbage took a lot longer than anticipated. She ended up making it while I was at work on Monday.
Before leaving for work, I told her the flavors I liked in kimchi, ginger, jeotgal (that fishy stuff) and fruitiness (preferably from Korean pears). She incorporated some of my requests and ended up with a damn fine kimchi. She was so proud of herself and said it was so easy that I have a feeling that we won’t be shopping for E-Mart kimchi anymore. Good idea in this economy.
Monday evening, we had a little kimchi celebration feast with the foods that we each love during winter. She made a Doenjang Jjigae with Naengi.
Pork and kimchi are always great together. The things that look like French fries are a batch of Hangjeongsal. Only the best.
I mentioned that I also love oysters in my kimchi, so she got them separately. I dressed them with a lot of fresh lemon juice (almost a ceviche) and Alabama Sunshine hot sauce. Eun Jeong’s never been a fan of shellfish, but this has converted her. She bought more oysters last night so I could make it again. And I’ve said before, the oysters in Korea are the best I’ve ever had, and I come from near the oyster rich region of Appalachicola.
Needless to say that meals like Monday night make me feel privileged to live in Korea. You can’t eat like this anywhere else–especially on our current budget.
Valuable research from Annalog. Her cousin got a set of Korean space food.
Mmm… freeze-dried kimchi!
Check out the video!
The Asia Sentinel reports on a Joongang Daily article saying that the Korean government wants to establish standards to rate commercially produced kimchi. The standard would be a five point scale to rate its spiciness as well as rating its level of ripeness (non-fermented, fermented, and over-fermented).
So maybe you’ll be able to know the heat and the stink before opening your package of kimchi.
The Asia Sentinel article also has some interesting history on the industrialization of kimchi.
Yeah, I’m getting cocky now.
I made kimchi last month, and it was good. We used it up within a few weeks. I wanted to make more. But this time, I wanted to really make kimchi. At the Kimchi Festival, they had done most of the work. All we did was rub the yangnyeom paste in between the leaves.
I have tasted enough kimchi over the years to know what I like. I wanted to make my first ZenKimchi Signature Kimchi.
I mentioned this to Eun Jeong.
“I think I’ll make kimchi this Saturday.”
“No, it’s too much work.”
“I did it at the Kimchi Festival.”
“But you didn’t make the yangnyeom. That’s a lot of work. Lots of chopping.”
“I know how to chop.”
Last weekend, Eun Jeong gave in. She had returned from her mother’s house in Gyeongju and saw that I was already screwing things up. We went to the store together to start getting ingredients, mainly the cabbage and salt.
Coarse ground mineral salt, if you’re curious.
I was a bit too ambitious. They had individual cabbages, but they were already trimmed. I thought you needed untrimmed cabbage so you could use the outer leaves to cover the kimchi. I found out that’s only if you’re going to put it in an earthenware jar and maybe bury it underground. And the only untrimmed cabbage on sale was in three packs.
“Well, if this turns out, I’ll make more. And I can use one of the cabbages to make my grandmother’s Pigs in a Blanket (Hungarian Cabbage Rolls), which freeze well.”
Eun Jeong sighed.
She laid out some newspaper, took one of the cabbages, and lopped off the base.
| |
She then split it in half.
I should also remind you that this is a food journal. This is not somewhere to go for tried and true tested recipes. My Korean Kitchen is the best place to go for recipes. I just record stuff I did, and you can take away from it what you find useful.
As she cut up a cabbage, I filled a plastic tub full of cold water. I had thoroughly washed and disinfected this tub, by the way.
“Joe, what are you doing?”
“I’m making a brine. I’m mixing salt with water like it says in the book.”
My overconfidence in kimchi making partly stemmed from my possession of a book called Good Morning, Kimchi! by Prof. Sook-ja Yoon. She said to soak the cabbage in a 15% salt solution for six to eight hours.
Eun Jeong was on and off the phone with her mother for advice. Her mother said we should salt the cabbage itself with no water. So we did that.
We went out to do some shopping and returned a few hours later.
The salt had leeched some water out but not much. She talked to her mother again. Her mother clarified that we needed to put the salt in between each leaf.
Eun Jeong did that, but she said it would still take a long time for the cabbage to become appropriately wilted. We agreed to go with the brine.
So I put the salted cabbages in the tub and filled it with cold water. Eun Jeong later quartered the cabbages to speed up the process. It was 9 P.M. before was started actually putting together the kimchi itself.
Now, I wanted to make a kimchi with the flavors that I wanted. I know what you’re thinking. What’s the big deal about kimchi?
I can’t expect you to understand unless you’ve had really good kimchi. All the kimchi I’ve had in America is horrible. It’s sour cabbage. The kimchi I’ve had in Korea is complex with many layers of flavors, like a fine wine.
The kimchi I like has a healthy ocean flavor. It’s bright. It has a slight fruitiness with an undercurrent of ginger. And I like it hot.
So, you could almost say this is my mise en place.
I’ve read in many places, including Good Morning, Kimchi!, that you can make kimchi out of almost anything, as long as the main ingredient is brined properly. The only exception I’ve heard of is potatoes. And green beans have to be blanched first.
Yet, I’ve also figured out with cabbage kimchi there are specific categories of components.
The Cabbage
Just to review, it needs to be salted either directly or in a brine to make it flexible and to create an environment hostile to hostile microbes. Thoroughly rinse it and drain it before stuffing.
The Veggies
You could say this is the mirepoix of the kimchi. The main ingredients are garlic (one head), ginger (I did a lot), daikon radish, and green onions. You can also add carrots, watercress, spinach (what I did), leeks, eggplant, apples, or Korean pears (another addition of mine). All the veggies should be cut into matchstick sized strips or minced. Like I said, I wanted a fruity ginger flavor, so I put in extra ginger and a Korean pear. If you’ve never had a Korean pear, also known as Asian pear, you are missing out on a sublime fruit.
The Paste
Generally, two parts gochugaru (Korean chile powder) to one part anchovy juice. Anchovy juice goes by many names, fish sauce, nuoc mam, nam plah… it’s a liquid left over from salting and fermenting little fishies. I know it sounds disgusting, and the smell from the bottle will kill your dog. Yet in the right applications, it brings the fresh flavor of the sea to your table. Just be careful with it. I also stress that there aren’t many substitutions for gochugaru. The closest thing I can think of is real Hungarian paprika. Both have a strong sweet flavor. Gochugaru is a lot hotter. Yet in making a kimchi paste, the coarser grind of gochugaru makes it spongy and super absorbent. So basically, for this one head of cabbage, I used two cups of gochugaru with one cup of anchovy juice in a bowl, covering with a plate–that stuff reeks!
The Jeot
The protein in the kimchi–almost always something from the sea. In my kimchi, I put in two healthy tablespoons of fermented baby shrimp, washed, and some fresh oysters. The oysters make the kimchi taste bright and fresh.
Seasonings
I didn’t use many seasonings in the yangnyeom. When mixing everything together, I tasted it regularly (have a beer handy when tasting–it’s hot). I did adjust the flavor a bit by adding some sugar and a tiny bit of fine salt.
Wearing a plastic glove, I thoroughly mixed everything.
I then took each piece of cabbage, rinsed and drained. Starting with the core pieces, I slathered the sauce in between each leaf. I have no pictures of this because both hands were covered in yangnyeom slop, and Eun Jeong had long since gone to bed. But you can see pictures of that when I made kimchi during the Kimchi Festival.
When each quarter was busting through with stuffing, I rolled it in a ball and put it in a large zipper bag.
The moment of truth occurred the next day at dinner. Eun Jeong nervously tried my kimchi.
The Verdict: Good.
On the plus side, I achieved the balance of flavors I was shooting for. It still was a bit salty, but that has since subsided over the past few days.
On the down side, I should have let the cabbage wilt more and drain more. I also ran short on yangnyeom paste when making it. So I can easily fix that next time.
But aren’t you supposed to let kimchi ferment first?
Well, have you ever had a fresh pickle? Good, huh. Kimchi ferments well, yes, but it is also good fresh. And with the oysters in it–I’m not going to take any chances and let it go for more than a month or so.
You gotta cheq this out!
Mary from maryeats has recently made her first batch of kimchi. And she has keeping the monster alive that was created by Adam at the Amateur Gourmet and revived here.
We love you Mary!
<– Click on the picture to see the rest.
The Food Journal is over a year old now. It’s about time I start talking about kimchi. I’ve learned a good bit during my few years in Korea, and it helps that I eat it almost every day. I ask a lot of questions, and I research when possible.
Since I’m a history buff, especially when it comes to food history, let’s talk about kimchi’s, um, history.
The Beginning — Pure Survival
Korea is in northeast Asia. I know from personal experience that the winters are cold, cold, cold. The BBC says that Korea has some of the coldest weather in its latitude.
Korea is also mountainous with a few fertile plains. This makes food preservation during cold months a high priority. When early Koreans started an agricultural lifestyle, they ate salted vegetables to aid in the digestion of grains. The grains back then consisted of barley and millet. Rice was introduced much later.
This salting of vegetables turned into a preservation art. It was not only used to make pickles. Koreans started preserving soybeans, making them into a paste (doenjang) and into a sauce (ganjang, soy sauce).
The Chinese history book Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms), written in the 3rd century C.E., says the following, “The people of Koguryeo are very good at making fermented foods such as wine, soybean paste, and chotkal (salted and fermented fish).” 1
The early kimchis were a lot different than they are now. There was no red pepper (as no one had gone to the Americas to retrieve it), and cabbage was not used often. Early kimchis were mainly radishes dipped in paste or salted in brine. 2
During this period, more vegetables were being brought in, including pine mushrooms, large radishes, and the famous Chinese cabbage.
The first known written record about kimchi itself was in the middle of the Koryeo Dynasty. Poet Lee Kyu-bo wrote the following:
Preserved in soybean paste, kimchi tastes good in the summer. Whereas kimchi pickled in brine is served as a good side dish during the winter. When the root of the Chinese cabbage grows larger in the ground, it tastes like a pear, especially after the first frost in the autumn harvest season.
The types of vegetables used in kimchi diversified during the Koryeo Dynasty. Cucumbers, wild leeks, Indian mustard leaf, and bamboo shoots found their way into kimchi pots. The “juicy” style of kimchis also came into being.
This is also the time that garlic and spices were introduced.
Kimchi diversified more during Korea’s longest and most stable dynasty. Salt was no longer the sole preservative. Kimchis were also being preserved in soy sauce.
The average king’s table would have baechu kimchi (white cabbage kimchi, similar to sauerkraut), water kimchi, and Ggakdugi (tiny cubed radish kimchi).
It was around this time that chile peppers were introduced into kimchi.
Japan’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi attempted a few failed invasions of Korea from 1592-1598. It is at this time, I believe, that both Japan and Korea went through major culinary changes.
Korea, at the time, was closed off to the world except China. It had little to do with Japan and absolutely nothing to do with European traders. Yet Japan had been doing trade with the Portuguese. The Portuguese introduced foods from the Americas, including potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and chile peppers.
The Japanese didn’t take too well to the chile peppers, but they did like the sweet potatoes. Some special varieties of sweet potato are sold as souvenirs in Japan today.
Despite the horrors of the Hideyoshi invasions, including Hideyoshi bringing home his own souvenirs of 38,000 Korean ears (and I don’t mean corn), some major cultural exchanges took place.
The Japanese took home methods for making celadon pottery, ideas about Buddhism, and art.
Korea was introduced to New World ingredients such as sweet potatoes 3 and chile peppers. 4 Even though it is still debated that the Hideyoshi invasions themselves introduced chile peppers or that they were brought in from China, red chile peppers were heavily used within a hundred years of the invasions. This totally changed the fermentation methods and appearance of kimchi.
Clever kimchi makers were adding animal proteins to their kimchis. Pheasant was mentioned in a book in 1670. In 1803, the Gyuhab Cheongseo, an encyclopedia for women, recommended using fermented fish in kimchi.
Tongbaechu Kimchi, the whole cabbage kimchi everyone is familiar with, was first invented after 1800 C.E. It became the most popular style of kimchi, replacing the radish, cucumber, and eggplant. 5
By 1827, there were 92 different types of kimchi. Today there are over 200. 6 Later, I’ll detail more and try to tackle as many of the 200 as I can.
Footnotes
1. Kimchi Field Museum. Seoul, South Korea
2. 2005. Sook-ja Yoon. Good Morning, Kimchi!. p. 10
3. National Museum of Korea
4. Good Morning Kimchi!. p. 11
5. Kimchi Field Museum
6. Good Morning Kimchi!. p. 11