What is Kimchi? | Cooking school
By Layla Khoury-Hanold for Food Network Kitchen
Layla Khoury-Hanold is a Food Network contributor.
Perhaps you’ve tasted kimchi at a Korean restaurant or heard it being introduced as a fermented superfood packed with probiotics. But there’s so much more about kimchi to unpack, and that’s why we turned to Pascale Yamashitaa recipe developer, food stylist, food photographer and food lover who was raised in a Korean family and currently lives in Japan.
Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made from salted and fermented vegetables. Baechu kimchi is the most iconic and is made with napa cabbage, salt, garlic, ginger, scallions, fish sauce, and gochugaru (Korean flakes), giving it its signature spiciness and red color. “What makes kimchi special is that the pickled vegetables/pickles are seasoned, then fermented,” says Yamashita. “Going through these three stages gives kimchi its distinctive flavor.”
‘Kimchi’ is used to refer to all types of vegetable kimchi. “The number will be equivalent to the number of Korean vegetables, including mountain vegetables available in Korea,” said Yamashita. Some other examples of vegetable kimchi include kkakdugi (radish), oi sobagi (cucumber) and Kkaennip kimchi (perilla leaves). Yamashita says not all kimchi is made from gochugaru and therefore is not red. One is kimchi mul, or water kimchi, which includes dongchimi, a cold, green radish kimchi that Yamashita says Koreans enjoy for its refreshing taste and as a palate cleanser after a meal. eat a lot of meat.
Kimchi was first made to preserve vegetables for future consumption, especially during the colder months when vegetables were scarce. To make enough kimchi for at least three months and up to a year, families have gathered enough labor to process the hundreds of napa radishes needed to make such quantities. This village’s tradition of making and sharing kimchi is called kim-jang.
Yamashita visited Korea every year while growing up and remembered her grandmother joining kim-jang with relatives. After all the ingredients have been gathered, the women will sit around to make the kimchi, with different groups responsible for each step of the kimchi-making process, such as cutting, washing, and rinsing. or pickled cabbage. “Imagine the women squatting in the backyard around the giant bowls and containers that are being prepared for them,” says Yamashita. “It is also an event where people will share, chat and gossip, and is often the place where women first learn how to make kimchi.” At the end of the process, families gather for a small party to sample the freshly made kimchi before it ferments, a dish to be enjoyed only that day.
Yamashita says that from the 1970s to the 1990s, white-collar workers even received kim-jang bonuses from their companies, an amount of kimchi valued at a few months’ salary. Nowadays, not many women stay at home making kimchi, and kimchi is readily available at grocery stores. Yamashita says that some families still participate in kim-jang in the fall and share the yield with family and friends. Kim-jang events and rallies are also held at companies and community centers as a means of cultural preservation and education. Kim-jang is also recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Korea.
In general, kimchi tastes sour, spicy, and salty, but its flavor varies depending on the type of vegetable and additional ingredients used, as well as the aging period. “Kimchi is usually crispy but it can vary depending on the vegetable. But it will still have the flavor from all the ginger, garlic and scallions, the salty taste from the fish sauce, and the tangy taste from the sugar turning into lactic acid in the process,” says Yamashita. “Kimchi becomes more and more tangled as it ferments.”
Adding oysters, anchovy sauce or fermented squid to fish sauce will alter the umami and salinity of the finished product, and the slight differences between the basic ingredients, such as the coarseness of the salt, the types. gochugaru, the water content and sweetness of the cabbage and the flavor of garlic and ginger also affect the taste of kimchi. “If you’re in Korea, check out the different regions and you’ll see one area with more sour or salty kimchi and another with lighter and more refreshing kimchi,” says Yamashita. “It is said that the further south you move, the more delicious kimchi tends to be. The further north it goes, the more temperate it becomes.”
Recipes for kimchi vary from household to household, with family recipes reflecting their own flavors and ingredient preferences. The basic ingredients for making kimchi include gochugaru, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, rice glue, salt, and sugar. It also usually includes shredded daikon radish and carrots; Sometimes Asian pears or apples are added to the brine for sweetness. Other ingredients may be added or added, such as oysters (although oysters can spoil in kimchi if left too long, so it’s best to eat within 2 to 3 weeks), or minari, will give the kimchi flair but can overpower the other ingredients.
Since kimchi is made by fermenting lacto, like sauerkraut, yogurt, or kefir, it grows probiotics contributes to a healthy gut microbiome that helps support digestion and immunity Dana Angelo White, MS, RD, ATC.a registered dietitian and owner of Dana White Nutrition, Inc. Furthermore, it contains about 30 calories per 1/2 cup.
“What a lot of Korean moms tell their kids is that this is a vegetable and it has all the goodness that yogurt has, so it’s a dual combo what your mom wants,” says Yamashita. you eat.”
“Koreans often have rice and soup to enjoy with their meals with some side dish called banchan, so kimchi helps add some crunchiness amidst the softer savory banchan. Many people like delicious bone broth soup and often people eat it with rice, and kimchi goes well with it,” said Yamashita.
Yamashita shares that another popular way of enjoying kimchi is Ssam, which means ‘package’. Grilled or boiled meat, usually pork, wrapped in Korean lettuce or perilla leaves with kimchi, sometimes with Korean fermented soybean paste. Kimchi is often stir-fried in dishes along with onions, garlic, and gochujang. One such dish is dweji-kimchi bokkeum, which literally means stir-fried pork and kimchi, and is often enjoyed with rice. Sour kimchi is usually washed, then chopped and added to stir-fries or dishes Korean kimchi stew/soup, called Kimchi Jjigae. Another classic Korean dish made with kimchi is Kimchi Bibim Guksu (pictured above), a cold noodle dish using kimchi, gochugaru, gochujang and sugar to achieve a spicy-sweet balance.
Kimchi continues to ferment once opened, so it becomes more pungent and sour as time goes on. It can become less appealing to eat if the vegetables lose their crispiness or the flavor becomes too sour or strong. Yamashita shared that in Korea, some people throw away old kimchi while others appreciate it. “In Korea, you can buy old kimchi that has been fermented for months. Usually, people enjoy its rich flavor, or people buy them to cook dishes like kimchi jjigae (a kind of stew) or kimchi fried rice.”
You’ll know it’s time to throw out your kimchi when the sour smell turns rancid, if there’s a serious color change, such as Napa cabbage kimchi going from bright red to brown, red-orange or if it is moldy. Yamashita recommends storing kimchi in the refrigerator to extend its shelf life, and always handle kimchi with clean hands and clean utensils (use contaminated utensils or handle kimchi with unwashed hands). can cause kimchi to grow).
Kimchi accompanies almost every meal in Korea, so you should master a few basic recipes. Then experiment with adding kimchi to traditional dishes and spin creatively, anywhere that can benefit from a fun, crunchy, umami flavor. Try adding it to a bowl of ramen noodles or Bowl of riceor use it for seasoning, like with this burger topping kimchi mayo. Yamashita says that the younger generations of Korea enjoy kimchi with melted cheese, add it pilau and grilled cheese sandwich.
All families have their own variation on this iconic kimchi recipe. This dish was developed by Jackie Ji Yoon Park for Food Network Kitchen, based on her grandmother’s recipe. Kimchi is a work of love but with a bit of planning and prep work, you can salt the cabbage and make the dasima anchovy and rice glue broth the day before, then leave the preparation for the rest. for the next day. It’s well worth the effort to make a batch of homemade kimchi, with all its spicy, nutty, tart glory.
You can use any type of cucumber here, but Kirby cucumbers make for an extra crunchy and flavorful condiment. Cucumber kimchi makes a great accompaniment to Korean BBQ or other grilled proteins, and a great burger topping in place of pickles. And don’t worry about eating them all at once – they’ll last up to a week in the fridge.
This kimchi is made with perilla leaves, a green herb in the mint family. This kimchi combined with the sauce enhances the mild flavor of the kimchi, while allowing the fresh mint and herbaceous flavors of the perilla leaves to radiate.
While it won’t have the saltiness and sourness of fermented kimchi, this quick kimchi makes pickled cabbage flavorful in just a fraction of the time. A spicy, salty sauce made with paprika, garlic, ginger, sugar, fish sauce and red pepper is used to coat the chopped cabbage and scallions, then leave to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.