
The Art of Kimchi (2009) - smacktoward
https://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/The-Art-of-Kimchi
======
pm90
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 .

~~~
nas
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.

~~~
spodek
For a container, these lids [https://www.amazon.com/Maintenance-silicone-
waterless-fermen...](https://www.amazon.com/Maintenance-silicone-waterless-
fermentation-dishwasher/dp/B072N42T61) on mason jars make me glad to be alive
just after their invention, given that people have fermented food for
millennia.

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.

~~~
thx11389793
When I was a kid making yeast-based sugar hooch I just stretched a balloon
with a pinprick in it over the mouth of a jar or jug.

------
Dowwie
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](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.

~~~
pm90
Is this available commercially anywhere else? (e.g. in SF?)

~~~
weaksauce
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.

~~~
s-shellfish
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.

~~~
MisterOctober
^ 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.

------
pmoriarty
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.

The author also has an interesting blog.[2]

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-
Es...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-
Essential/dp/160358286X/)

[2] - [https://www.wildfermentation.com/](https://www.wildfermentation.com/)

------
diffeomorphism
Unviewable without clicking "allow all cookies".

The cookie breakdown is kinda interesting:

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and "unclassified"

Since it is not possible to not consent to all the unnecessary cookies, this
seems non-compliant (feel free to show ads without all the privacy invasion).

~~~
yread
Also the first "Necessary" cookie:

    
    
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has "providers" (what does that mean?):

    
    
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I think I can do without reading this article if it's necessary to have
taboola cookies to read it

~~~
buro9
__cfduid is a Cloudflare cookie that is used to determine whether the browsing
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It is placed on all domains that proxy via Cloudflare and the existence of it
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The list of domains above are a list of 3rd parties that the saveur.com
website links to that also happen to be Cloudflare customers... so we can tell
they're using Embedly, Taboola, Viglink, etc.

A quick look around says that not all of the links are on every page so not
all cookies are set on every page, but the consent list presented appears to
be the superset of all possible cookies to be set by all possible third
parties if you were to visit everything on the Saveur web site.

------
NelsonMinar
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.

~~~
Kalium
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!

------
bane
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...](http://www.chicagonow.com/chewables-
chicago/files/2012/11/IMG_1205.jpg)

It's also worth it to explore some of the other fermented foods that Koreans
regularly use. Two of my all time favorites are
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doenjang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doenjang)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssamjang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssamjang).

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](https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/doenjang-jjigae)

~~~
vram22
>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.

~~~
bane
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](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:

Non-aspirated, stressed, aspirated

ㄱ - g - ㄲ - gg - ㅋ - k

ㄷ - d - ㄸ - dd - ㅌ - t

ㅂ - b - ㅃ - bb - ㅍ - p

ㅅ - s - ㅆ - ss - NA

ㄹ - r/l - NA - NA

ㅁ - m - NA - NA

ㅇ - 'nothing' \- NA - ㅎ - h

ㅈ - j - ㅉ - jj - ㅊ - ch

~~~
vram22
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.

------
csours
I love Kimchi - I love Korean BBQ and the veggies are my favorite part. If you
ever find yourself in DFW, try out OMI in Carrollton.

I've thought of trying to make my own with greens like kale, collard, mustard
etc. I should just try it out.

------
cmplxconjugate
Kimchi is one of those things that might seem slightly off putting on the
initial taste, but god lord it’s addictive beyond that point.

I don’t know if anyone has the experience of making it themselves but I would
definitely like to give it a go.

~~~
chaotic_clanger
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 :)

------
hectorlorenzo
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.

------
satsuma
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.

------
dba7dba
Few years ago Hana Hou (inflight magazine of Hawaiian Air) had an article on
Kimchi scene in Hawaii.

[https://hanahou.com/14.5/deep-kim-chee](https://hanahou.com/14.5/deep-kim-
chee)

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.

------
abalone
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.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreatown,_Long_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreatown,_Long_Island)

------
oldgeezr
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...

~~~
curuinor
Korea has some of the highest rates of stomach cancer in the world. Who knows
if it's just all the smoking...

~~~
pwaai
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

------
bluedino
I love kimchi but I do feel sorry for my co-workers as it stinks the place up

~~~
Regardsyjc
Every time I took out kimchi to eat with my ramen noodles in college, the
entire room smelled like ass. Excuse my language but the smell is that bad.

------
pwaai
Fun fact, the spicy pepper was only introduced after the Portuguese brought it
to East Asia.

The original Kimchi was not spicy and red.

~~~
girzel
Was it basically sauerkraut? People in north-eastern China (across a river
from North Korea) all eat something basically indistinguishable from
sauerkraut.

~~~
mikekchar
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.

~~~
pwaai
You are accurate in that fish sauce is the original but people switched to
shrimp sauce because it was less pungent.

I think when you salt the veggies and then coat it with a mix of garlic pepper
paste and wait for fermentation to occur, flavor is produced.

Like if you ate a newly seasoned Kimchi you can tell it's not ripe until it
eventually develops its flavor after fermentation has taken place.

------
me_bx
The article cannot be accessed at all Firefox/linux, when browsing from
Europe.

A consent page is displayed, but no action buttons. browser console shows
error messages about failing to load the consent script.

Same happened in another website browsed from hackerNews yesterday. Works
kind-of-ok when I open chromium. Redirected to the site's home page instead of
the article after accepting cookie policy, plus presented with another modal
to accept even more cookies...

~~~
icebraining
Are you blocking cookiebot.com? Works fine here (Firefox/Linux), it shows a
bar at the bottom where you can "Accept all cookies", and then it redirects to
the article.

(As a side note, the cookie consent page lists 279(!) cookies just for
marketing, plus 37 for "statistics" and 87 more "unclassified". I'm amazed the
browser even allows that many.)

------
collyw
Another article that is of interest to me personally but I am surprised to see
on HN.

