This was such a nice and informative article, a joy to read.
As an occasional visitor of Korea and a big fan of authentic Korean cuisine, I have witnessed firsthand this tradition of Kimchi making; I was in a slightly remote part of the country, and did get to see the actual earthen Kimchi jars used. Older Koreans are incredibly industrious; you will see them grow stuff everywhere, even on tiny plots on hillsides which seem ridiculously steep. However, I don't believe the younger generation really cares about all this stuff so all these traditions seem like they will die out soon. And I'm not being judgemental about younger Koreans, if you read the article you can clearly see just how much labor is involved... who has the time and patience for that kind of stuff anymore?
Similarly... in my Mothers household in India, there was a tradition of pickle making (Indian pickles, or aachar, are very different from the pickles you find in the west); I distinctly remember my Mother going back home and helping my grandmother with the preparation and bringing back home jars of the stuff. After my grandmother passed away, my mother tried a couple of times to make that stuff, but its so labor intensive that now she just buys supermarket branded pickles .
To store Kimchi long enough in earthen Kimchi jars (KimJangDdock or JangDdockDae), we have to half bury it underground. The problem is, most people in Korea, especially younger people doesn't have places to bury it. That's why refrigerator specialized for Kimchi is so popular in Korea.
Still many younger people tries to make Kimchi by their own. Some just for hobby. Some for their own taste. And there are niche market to provide half prepared ingredients to reduce most of burden.
I don't think this tradition will die out. I will be changed.
My mom made kimchi but it became no longer financially worthwhile especially considering the labor. I was happy though because her kimchi was not as good as the local grandma's kimchi, whose kimchi was just a little bit better than the ones I get at my local Korean supermarket.
For true kimchi lovers, the best kimchi I've ever had in my life was at a Korean Buddhist temple, and I've probably had hundreds of pounds of kimchi in my life. Highly recommend looking into Korean Buddhist cuisine because they built their vegan culinary expertise over centuries.
For those curious in trying Korean cuisine, go to a traditional Korean restaurant, safest bet being Korean BBQ. A good traditional Korean restaurant should serve at least 5 different side dishes, and probably 3 of them will be pickled, with at least one dish being kimchi.
Or go to a Korean supermarket like Hmart and you'll find more types of kimchi than you could possibly imagine... Even I'm stunned by all the varieties available at my local supermarket...
It is possible the pickles you are talking about are fermented. They are indeed very different than what you would buy in the store. Other cultures have fermented pickles as well.
Regarding fermented cabbage, the sauerkraut you buy in the grocery store is very far from real fermented sauerkraut as well. It annoys me (maybe my eastern European ancestry surfacing) that they can even label it as such. If you have never had real sauerkraut, you are missing out. The grocery stuff is basically salty and sour cabbage. Tastes horrible.
My grandparents and great-grandparents homesteaded in Saskatchewan. I got to wondering how people in those times and living there did not get scurvy during the winter. I guess part of it was access to fresh meat. However, I know they also ate a lot of sauerkraut and "barrel pickles". The fermentation increases the vitamin C content of the food. I think even when they did not understand scurvy, they knew that eating that kind of food was healthy.
I've been meaning to make my own sauerkraut. It is really not difficult. I need some way to chop the cabbage. My parents have a special slicing machine. I suppose even a knife would do. Then you need some kind of fermentation container. Nothing complicated. The recipe is very simple. My grandmother used X tablespoons of salt per head. I've been using 2.5% salt by weight, which seems to work okay too. I like it to be less salty but still ferment and be safe. If I don't make it, I only get a taste when I visit my parents.
Dead simple, no mold, no burping necessary. Chop vegetables, add salt, mix and mash, put in jar with one of these lids on top. The next morning you'll see it bulging, letting the CO2 out but no O2 in.
If you want to buy it in the stores I recommend https://bubbies.com/ you can find them in organic food stores or smaller chains. Or in general just read the label, if it has vinegar and sugar probably there was no fermentation. Just like you said it is rather annoying they are even called "pickles" or "sauerkraut".
> My grandmother used X tablespoons of salt per head.
We used to make our own growing up in a clay pot. One thing I remembered was to not use iodized salt or if it has any additives (anti-caking compounds) those can mess up the fermentation.
> I think even when they did not understand scurvy, they knew that eating that kind of food was healthy.
It was actually well known by your great-grandparents time that sauerkraut prevented scurvy, the most notable example was Captain Cook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#History) but it was known to German sailors earlier. Earlier than that it's hard to work out how much they "knew" versus what was simple survivor-ship bias.
AFAIK the sauerkraut available in German supermarkets is fermented. My parents used to make their own, and it really was not that much work. I don't remember it tasting very different from the stuff you can buy here (Germany).
This reminds me that I've never bought sauerkraut myself. I kinda like it but I don't cook the things that go with it at home.
I once took a bus trip from Seoul to Seoraksan (basically coast to coast). I was tremendously impressed by the industry with which every available square meter was cultivated. In Seoul, anywhere there was green space, there was a garden. No space at all wasted on grass. Even the narrow verge between the highway and an apartment block was be cultivated. In the countryside, people were logging nearly vertical hillsides, and as far as I could see they were doing so without using mechanized logging equipment. Every barbecue restauraunt had sesame plants growing outside, which they used for leaves to serve with bulgogi, although I think it's also for advertising.
And of course, there were pots for kimchi everywhere. Korean people told me that eating kimchi is why Koreans are so strong and healthy. I find it hard to disagree -- anecdotally, I have never felt more energized than after eating kimchi jigae for breakfast. And my American companions who passed on the kimchi but tried to keep up with the soju, they all got quite sick.
Anyway, kimchi is delicious and everybody should eat it.
>there was a tradition of pickle making (Indian pickles, or aachar
There are some good Indian pickles or preserves that are less known nowadays, or at least, I do not see or hear of them as much. A few are:
- mahani - it's made from the root of a plant, googled it ("mahani pickle") recently, may be (Indian version of) sarsaparilla; it has an unusual taste; had it at a relative's farm, where they made it from bushes growing there
- sundakai (small bright reddish-yellow fruit of a bush), sun-dried and then quickly deep-fried, to have as a condiment with meals (a kind of "vattal", it's called, in Tamil) (think something like dried then fried chillies, not in hotness but in the technique)
- karonda (a small crimson fruit of a tree, incredibly tangy and sourish (but more to it) taste, used to pick and eat them from wild trees in Central India as a kid, also once had an unforgettable pickle made from them in a Punjabi restaurant in Bangalore (it might have been Casa Piccola)
- green peppers (not chillies, the same fruit as the black pepper, but when unripe), pickled in just salted water; bought a jar a couple of times at a Kerala foods store in Pune, comes in sprigs, mouth-watering and a bit deceptively strong.
I don’t know if this would be horribly invasive to ask, but do you have and would you be willing to share the recipe and process your mother and grandmother used to make their aachar?
Yes, but in many cases, people still expose the jars (ceramic or glass) to sunlight, for some days or weeks. I remember older relatives in my family doing that on house terraces as a kid. My guess is that the sunlight sterilizes the contents (sunlight in many parts of India is strong, particularly in summer, being somewhat near the equator), and may even change the flavor by some reaction.
So there is a combined preservative effect from the factors you listed, plus sunlight.
I highly recommend Maangchi's cooking show on youtube. I've had many batches of kimchi, cabbage and radish based, using her recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTucCw1w6Ak
2-day fermented kimchi from a fresh crop of napa cabbage is heavenly. It has a very distinctive crunch and sweetness.
I grew up on the stuff and was never a fan of the "new," barely fermented bleach-white kimchi. It has to be at least a couple of weeks aged, until it's more sour than salty, with an effervescent bite from the fermentation. Though I know even some other Koreans prefer the "fresh" kind over the old.
My family back to my grandparents prefer the "fresh" kind. I had an encounter with very-very fermented very-very spicy stuff many years back. It even had some squid in it. I didn't care for it, but my friend of Japanese extraction raved about it.
You should be able to find some in a Whole Foods or the like. Not as good as a homemade one following her recipe though. I just made a batch of hers and had some today. Nicely fermented and hot and and sour but the veggies are still nice and moderately crisp. Well worth the effort if you do it.
Seconding this.. Homemade kimchi vastly outranks anything store bought, even Whole Foods premium products. The same goes for most pickling and brining, as there are more additives in any pickled product to keep it stocked on the shelf. If it isn't sugar added, those additives can add bitterness, which takes away from the crisp tartness you want from a fermented food.
^ Indeed -- the homemade article is in a different league. A guy in our accounting department brings in a jar from his mom once in a while, and it is revelatory. The fermentation lids for mason jars [linked in an earlier comment] are great -- they permit results comparable to earthenware crock method but far easier to manage -- and work even for the neophyte. For even the casual kimchi or pickle consumer, in my experience, it's worthwhile to give it a shot oneself.
I highly recommend The Art of Fermentation[1] to anyone interested in making this and other fermented food and drinks. It's a huge, encyclopedic book on everything fermentation-related.
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Making kimchi or simple sauerkraut is a fun exercise in robust biotechnology. I was so nervous the first few times I tried doing it; surely I was going to make a mistake and it would be disgusting, or moldy, or full of botulin toxins. Turns out lactofermentation is a very old and very simple technology and as long as you salt things right and make it reasonably air-tight, very little can go wrong.
Seconding pmoriarty's recommendation for the book The Art of Fermentation. Or just find any online recipe for sauerkraut or kimchi, you can't really go wrong. You can ferment in any jar with a tight fitting lid. It's a little easier with an airlock so the CO2 offgasses but you can also just crack the lid every day or so while it ferments to keep the pressure under control.
I've been doing lactofermentation lately myself. I have also learned that it's very, very difficult to screw up. Worst thing that's happened to me so far is that not all my pickles have been quite to my taste!
The typical cabbage Kimchi also has a number of regional variants as well. Instead of salted shrimp, I've seen it made with small clams, or other things. It also makes it difficult to be a vegan in Korea (though its getting easier as that type of thing becomes more common) as literally everything has some kind of animal protein in it in some way even if it doesn't superficially appear to.
Kimchi is a living, aging, food, and its flavor profile will change dramatically over time -- leading to different uses in and with different foods at each stage. For example, there's a point where it starts to sour and the taste explodes with savory complexity -- and it's at that point where it excels as a condiment with pork.
These days, it's easier to just buy it at the grocery store. We buy it in 5lb bags and let it sit out for a few days to kickstart the fermentation again before putting it into jars in our fridge. My Mother-in-law has a dedicated Kimchi fridge that's at a more optimal temperature for the controlled fermentation. You can find a Korean grocer in most major U.S. cities and there will be a chiller section that looks something like this: http://www.chicagonow.com/chewables-chicago/files/2012/11/IM...
Doenjang can be used to quickly create an incredibly delicious broth as part of one of my favorite stews called Doenjang-jjigae. Recipe here https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/doenjang-jjigae
Why the double j in the word? Seen it before, not commonly seen in other languages (AFAIK), even if it is a transliteration (if that's the right term, I'm not a linguist). Does it mean extra emphasis of the j when saying the word.
Korean has some unusual consonants that are difficult to hear by non-Korean speakers but have an interesting representation in Hangul (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul)
The non-aspirated consonant ㅈ at the beginning of a syllable is pronounced more or less like an English 'j'. But in Korean there's a "tense" version of many of these consonants that are pronounced with more emphases. These are represented by writing the non-aspirated consonant twice. So ㅈ becomes ㅉ which transliterates to "jj".
The aspirated forms are also slightly different -- for ㅈ the aspirated form is ㅊ and pronounced more or less like the English "ch".
Korean consonants take on different pronunciations at the end of syllables and can modify in the middle or words and that's more complicated.
The nice part is that this means that you really only have to learn about 8 "core" consonants and then how they modify for each case and position. Korean vowels also have a similarly compact, easy to learn system that's different from the consonants -- there's only 5 "core" ones. It means you only have to really memorize about 11 symbols and their modified and combined forms to read and write. It takes about a week for the average non Korean speaking adult to be able to become basically literate in Korean Hangul!
Here's a list of the consonants that follow this rule (in the initial syllabic position) if you're interested:
Thanks, interesting stuff. I wouldn't have thought that a language could have so few symbols.
Sanskrit and Hindi scripts have letters like the non-aspirated and aspirated ones in your list, but I don't think they have the stressed kind, although letters (both vowels and consonants) have repeated consecutive occurrences (at least two) in words.
i live in the sauerkraut region, so i inherited the sauerkraut clay pot, but betrayed local customs and started "farming" kimchi instead.
it's so much more interesting in taste and not that hard to prepare (when in hurry you can prepare ~5kg in an afternoon).
one day i wanted to be cheeky to my 2-yo son, so i offered him a bit. to my amazement he gasped, but wanted more and more. weird :)
Yeah these days I eat sauerkraut now. It feels similar in some sense but not as complex as Kimchi....but the lack of smell is the advantage over kimchi
There seems to be a revival of everything fermented at the moment, thanks to people like Sandor Katz and (to less extend) Brad Leone. I've recently bought The Art of Fermentation by the former, and although I've been impressed by its thoroughness, it's not a recipe book you can follow.
As with sourdough bread and brewed beers, I'm not sure if this is just a hipsterish fad that will go away in a decade, or if this slowly recovering past traditions are here to stay. As a hobby, of course.
i worked as a server last school year for a local korean restaurant, and as a 20-something who grew up in a rural community with nothing more diverse than panda express, holy crap. what amazing flavors. i'm a regrettably picky eater but that restaurant had me trying everything on the menu. the one thing i never expected to like was the kimchi and pickled radish, but now i'm in love.
the only bummer is it turned me off to anyone's kimchi but the owner's. nothing else tastes right.
It covers a local Korean market where Kimchi is made and sold. And then the companies that sold Kimchi in Hawaii, until a recent consolidation and about half of kimchi sold is made by a company owned by a man named Mike Irish.
Oyster kimchi! Had some of that recently from @queens_sf. Ex-tech couple who went into making authentic Korean food out here like you'd find in Long Island Koreatown.[1]
Shameless plug but if you're in SF they're popping up at Black Sands on Saturday 1-4.
Is there a consensus on the cancer risks of fermented foods like kimchi yet? Last I saw, some types of kimchi were associated with stomach cancer while some were not, but I'm not sure.
Lately I do a lot of pickling with vinegar/salt/sugar. I'm now addicted to pickled daikon. If I could only find a container capable of restraining the smell...
This is one of those things I have had on my 'need to look into further' list for a long time. Last status of my personal research is that it's clear that nitrite 'causes' (to just use the popular phrasing) cancer, and that many leafy vegetables are high in nitrate, and that nitrate gets converted to nitrite to some extent during fermentation.
People who make 'organic' sausages, for example, add celery as a 'preservative' so that they don't have to use the 'chemical' nitrite - except, the way it 'preserves' is that the nitrate in the celery is converted to nitrite during fermentation, but much less controlled than just measuring out nitrite in the first place, so those 'organic' or 'artisanal' sausages often have higher nitrite content than 'normal' sausages.
nah it's the drinking. Korea probably has the highest rate of binge drinking. Smoking can't be good but I heard Korean cigarettes are the bomb....too bad I quit cigs
>Fun fact, the spicy pepper was only introduced after the Portuguese brought it to East Asia.
Yes. Not only to East Asia, to India too, and probably to many other countries. In fact, maybe to Africa too, since they had colonies there too. I've had piri piri dishes in Goa, and heard or read that it came from Africa via the Portuguese.
Was it basically sauerkraut? People in north-eastern China (across a river from North Korea) all eat something basically indistinguishable from sauerkraut.
Kimchi is usually made with fish sauce (which stinks to high heaven when fermenting, but adds super umami when finished). I'm being stupid and reading the comments before I enjoy TFA, so maybe it is all explained there, but for me (even more than the hot peppers) that fish sauce really defines kimchi, though I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Yep! It's called Xian Cai (salted vegetable) or Suan Cai (sour vegetable) and like basically any other cuisine, there are dozens of variations on it across China. If you look at the picture on the wiki [1] you'll see that it's fermented almost exactly like sauerkraut, albeit whole not sliced.
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Similarly... in my Mothers household in India, there was a tradition of pickle making (Indian pickles, or aachar, are very different from the pickles you find in the west); I distinctly remember my Mother going back home and helping my grandmother with the preparation and bringing back home jars of the stuff. After my grandmother passed away, my mother tried a couple of times to make that stuff, but its so labor intensive that now she just buys supermarket branded pickles .