Kimchi is a food made in huge batches through a long,
arduous process. You can buy kimchi from a supermarket, a street vendor, or at
a restaurant but many people choose to make the spicy side dish themselves.
There are literally hundreds of recipes for kimchi, but the
typical one includes a vegetable, lots of water and a variety of spices. Napa cabbage
is by far the most popular vegetable used in the dish, but I’ve seen green onions,
radishes and cucumbers too. The spices included and the amounts of each vary by
recipe but most recipes require: salt, Korean chili powder (which is finely ground,
not flakey), green onions, brown onions, garlic, fish sauce, sugar, ginger,
sticky rice starch and white radish.
I am going to explain briefly how to make it, but let it be
known that I have never made kimchi from beginning to end, and I am certainly
not pretending to know all about it. I just wanted to give an overview of the
process as I see it since I’ve been here over a year, LOVE the food and
recently “helped” the staff at my school make a large batch. If you want to
know how to make it yourself, it is very easy to do a quick Goggle search and
find a recipe with detailed instructions.
From what I’ve seen of ajummas (Korean word meaning older
women) making kimchi, I know it takes A LOT of effort. You start by washing off
the cabbage, or whatever vegetable you are going to use, and then soaking it in
huge tubs of water and salt. This helps take the crunchiness out of the cabbage
and makes it ready to ferment. I’m not sure how long to leave the cabbage
sitting, but it’s at least overnight. Meanwhile, you combine the other
ingredients and make a sort of paste out of them.
Once your cabbage is nice and
limp, you can rinse it, wring out the water, and then coat each leaf with the
spicy paste. You truly cannot be too generous with the paste; seriously- the
more, the better. Once this is done, you
roll up the messy cabbage and place it into dark plastic containers with a lid
to let the fermenting process occur. This takes at least a few days and then
you can put your kimchi into a type of storage container, like a giant kimchi
fridge. Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like, a fridge containing nothing
but kimchi. Many Koreans have these in their homes and they are also a staple
in restaurants. These exist as a way to keep kimchi fresh and away from other
refrigerated foods so that the kimchi smell does not cling to them.
Kimchi Fridge at my school
As I said above, I am no kimchi expert, but I have witnessed
kimchi being made, at random times, in various stages. Last week, my school decided to whip up a
giant batch of the staple delicacy right at school. They took a “field trip” to
a garden somewhere nearby to pick cabbage. Then they brought it back to school
and had the kids bring it outside to be rinsed off and soaked in tubs outside.
The kids thought it was the most exciting thing ever, naturally. A few days later, last Wednesday, we were all
called into the cooking room during some morning classes. All the kids put on
their art shirts, to stay clean, and adult size plastic gloves were taped
around their wrists. They were each given a tray with some cabbage and sauce to
smear it on. This is the only part of
the process I’ve actually helped with, and it was only on two small bundles of
cabbage. Still it was fun, and another
experience! Check out a few more pictures from that day below.
Sally, and some other students preparing to make kimchi!
Kate and I
Ready for storage!
As always, thank you for reading! I’m going snowboarding
this weekend for the first time EVER so I’ll be sure to get lots of pictures to
keep it interesting!
SNOWBOARDING! :)(:
ReplyDelete