Hello, listeners. Thanks for tuning in. Let’s continue talking about Korea’s favorite foods. One food that must be on the Korean table is… Kimchi. It is Korea’s national dish and since it is Kimjang season, it’s the perfect time to mention it. Anyway, it’s a side dish that can be used to make the main dish and it is essential to really enjoy a Korean meal..

Kimchi is important for it embodies the ideology of Korean cuisine. It uses a technique of preserving and fortifying vegetables―mostly through the process of fermentation. There are over 100 different types of kimchi that are made using seasonal ingredients. Any vegetables can be used to make kimchi such as radish, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, etc. It can be made from almost every vegetable and it can also be made from fruit such as apples and pears.

Ancient recipes indicate that the original kimchi was made from boiling salted cabbage with beef stock. The problem with this type of kimchi was shelf life and it did not have the benefits of lax bacilus and vitamins of today’s kimchi.

The ubiquitous cabbage kimchi that Koreans love and adore has been around since the 17th century. The red chili powder was introduced around the year 1580 via Portuguese missionaries who were traveling through Asia. At first the chili powder was considered crude and only commoners would use it. Well, in public anyway. Nobles during that time had to always maintain an air of calm, so if they ate it they would do it in secret. However, chili powder was soon discovered to be nutritious and it was great for increasing the storage life of food. Both are essential attributes for Korean food: nutrition and preservation. Therefore it was added to a mixture of garlic, ginger, daikon radish, fermented fish and onions to make the basic seasoning for kimchi. These ingredients combined would preserve and fortify the vegetables and start a natural fermentation process.

Kimchi is rich in dietary fibers, lacto bacilus, lactic acid and acetic acid, which is extremely beneficial to the digestive system. The fermentation process allows kimchi to be stored for long periods of time. In the past, kimchi would be only made before the start of winter at the kimchi making festival which was called Kimjang. This festival would unite families and villages, as people would make hundreds of heads of kimchi and then store them in special slab pottery pots called onggi. It was labor intensive work because they had to brine and then season all the kimchi and then bury the onggi pots up to its neck in the ground. The burying process would help the fermentation and keep the vegetables at the optimal temperature. These days specialized kimchi refrigerators are used to maintain correct temperature and humidity.

Today, kimchi is still seen at almost every meal in Korea. It has been used in Western dishes including pasta sauce, hotdogs, tacos, hamburgers, and in savory pancakes. Also, it can be used as a filling for dumplings and flavoring for noodles. As kimchi becomes universally known, the applications for this dish become endless.