If You Can Make a Salad, You Can Make Kimchi

Kimchi is like a zombie, said Ji Hye Kim, the chef at Miss Kim in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Not quite alive, but not quite dead.”

In kimchi making, salt stalls the decomposition of fresh vegetables and allows good lactic-acid bacteria to grow through fermentation. Kim, 44, recalls a time in her life, back in Seoul, South Korea, when she had to keep watch for the building superintendent as her mother buried a crock of kimchi in the flower garden of their apartment complex. Months later, they would dig it up and enjoy the kimchi in its aged state, with its pleasurable tang and abundance of umami.

With a pickled briny flavor and gamchil mat (“savory taste” in Korean), kimchi is the national dish of South Korea and traditionally prepared at a kimjang, the communal act of making and sharing kimchi. Over several days each November, neighbors and family members gather to preserve pounds and pounds of butter-yellow napa cabbage by salting them and then mixing and packing them with sauce.

For many communities in South Korea, a kimjang (also spelled gimjang) remains a grand act. But these days, Korean cooks outside the motherland are adapting to their individual environments accordingly, scaling down their kimjangs to fit their lives or even hosting them virtually.

In a world where most people buy their kimchi at a store, preserving the act of preservation has become a priority for Koreans who wish to carry on the tradition of kimjang.

Since 2013, UNESCO has recognized kimjang as an intangible cultural heritage, a tradition and set of living knowledge that is not physical like a monument.

Some of the world’s most invaluable knowledge resides within people who must pass it down in order for it to survive, said cultural anthropologist Tim Curtis, secretary of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. What’s key is that “this kind of heritage must be developing and evolving, not frozen in time,” he said. “It must be living heritage.”

This notion of living heritage, in the form of kimjang, connects Koreans across the diaspora who share in this knowledge and experience. Kimjang symbolizes the tough Korean spirit: In order to survive harsh times, you must make yourself more resilient. Kimchi was a way to preserve the fall crop so that there would be enough food to last through the winter.

Some traditions may not be as necessary anymore, such as burying your kimchi in the ground to keep it cool in the summer and prevent freezing in the winter (there are refrigerators for that now). But the ritual of kimjang lives on in other ways.

As a child, Lauryn Chun lived with her grandmother for a couple of years in Seoul, where she saw the bustling magic of kimjang up close. In the fall, her grandmother’s neighborhood of mostly older women came together to make kimchi out of hundreds of pounds of napa cabbage. These kimjangs felt like parties, complete with intermittent tastings of the brined cabbage bundled with the aromatic seasonings.

When Chun, 52, attempted a batch herself years later in New York, the smell alone took her right back to her grandmother’s kimjangs. The recipe that she used (and now uses for her company, Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi) comes from Jang Mo Jip, her mother’s restaurant in Garden Grove, California, which is still running after more than 30 years. It is, she said, “a culmination of people and community and of the ladies who work there.”

It’s not that one person or family owns a recipe — through the act of kimjang, the kimchi belongs to everyone.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about kimchi is that it’s not that hard to make. Just because something takes a few steps doesn’t mean those steps are necessarily difficult. “If you can make a salad, you can make kimchi,” Chun said.

This is especially true when it comes to mak kimchi, a style that begins with chopped cabbage, versus tongbaechu, the more traditional kimjang kimchi that starts with larger halved or quartered heads of napa cabbage, which take much longer to brine.

For the spice averse, baek kimchi is milder and lets you taste the sweet cabbage more fully. This white kimchi is more predominant in the northern parts of South Korea (and in North Korea). The higher up you go on the peninsula, the less you’ll see gochugaru, the chile powder that stains many kimchis red.

Bo ssam or some kind of braised or steamed pork is a meal commonly eaten after a kimjang with the fresh kimchi as a celebration of all that hard work. But you might consider following the lead of chef Jeong-In Hwang and turn baek kimchi into a jjigae as he does at San Ho Won, the restaurant he runs with Corey Lee in San Francisco. Anchored by a hunk of pork shoulder that is simmered until tender, the stew is a mighty way to commemorate something as magical as making kimchi.

You don’t have to wait until November to have a kimjang. You can kimchi anything.

“I think of it as a formula rather than a list of ingredients,” said Ji Hye Kim, the chef in Ann Arbor. “Kimchi means salting vegetables that are in season” — and not just napa cabbage. She has kimchi-ed many vegetables every season in her life, including scallions in the spring and sunchokes in the fall.

There’s nothing like the tactile sensation of working with freshly harvested vegetables, and then turning them into a dish you’re going to eat for the next two months, she said. More than anything, kimchi is a reminder of the passage of time, that liminal space between death and (new) life. “There’s something beautiful about that process.”

You can’t buy it in a jar.

Kimchi

By Eric Kim

Sometimes called mak kimchi, this kimchi formula starts with chopped napa cabbage and is as easy as dressing a salad. You just toss everything together in a large bowl. Fish sauce anchors the kimchi sauce with incredible savoriness, while gochugaru, the Korean red-pepper powder, lends a deep crimson sheen and mild, fruity heat. Whatever chopped vegetables you add to the onion-garlic-ginger purée will lend their own natural sweetness as they ferment with the cabbage; scallions and daikon are the most traditional, but carrot works in a pinch and lends great color. We all need a good burp every now and then, so be sure to open the lid of your jar every couple of days to allow the gas from the fermentation process to escape. For the spice-averse, start with 1/4 cup of gochugaru, or turn to baek kimchi, which is a fragrant, chile-free version.

Yield: 1/2 gallon

Total time: 2 1/2 hours, plus 2 days’ fermenting

1 medium head napa cabbage (2 to 2 1/2 pounds), any dirty outer leaves removed

3 tablespoons coarse kosher salt or 5 tablespoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)

1 medium green apple or Asian pear, peeled, quartered and cored

1 small yellow onion, peeled and quartered

10 garlic cloves, peeled

1 (2-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/3 cup gochugaru (Korean red pepper)

1/3 cup fish sauce

3 scallions, trimmed

1 medium carrot or 1/2 medium daikon, peeled

1 tablespoon pine nuts (optional)

1. Dry-brine the cabbage: Rinse the head of cabbage under cold running water, making sure to get in between the leaves. Trim the root end off the cabbage and cut crosswise into 1-inch-thick slices, carving out any core if it’s especially big and tough. Transfer the cabbage strips to your largest bowl. Sprinkle over the salt and toss with your hands until evenly distributed. Set aside to brine at room temperature until the hard leaves shrink and become wet and limp (but are still crunchy), 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

2. Rinse the cabbage: Fill the bowl with cold running water and swish the leaves around to rinse them of their salt (and to clean off any dirt). Lift them up out of the water and transfer to a colander. Repeat once or twice until the cabbage leaves still taste discernibly salted, but not too salty that you can’t eat it like a salad. Rinse out the bowl.

3. Make the sauce: To a food processor, add the apple, onion, garlic, ginger, sugar and process until very finely chopped into a fluffy purée. Transfer the sauce to the empty bowl and stir in the gochugaru and fish sauce. Cut the scallions into 1-inch-long pieces and add to the bowl. Cut the carrot into matchsticks: slice crosswise into 1-inch lengths, then thinly slice lengthwise, stack the slices and cut lengthwise again into thin strips. Add to the bowl, along with the pine nuts, if using. Stir to combine. Add the drained cabbage to the sauce and toss with clean hands until well combined.

4. Transfer the sauced cabbage to a clean 1/2-gallon jar, using your hands to gently pack it down. (A few air gaps are fine; they’ll fill with liquid over time.) This amount of cabbage should leave about an inch of room at the top of the jar. Top the jar with any remaining sauce left behind in the bowl. Loosely close with a lid (see Tip). Wash your hands and rinse off the outside of the jar at this stage.

5. Let the jar of kimchi begin fermenting on the kitchen counter at room temperature for 2 to 3 days, “burping” it every 12 hours or so, which just means opening the lid to let out any excess buildup of gas. After this, the cabbage should have released even more of its liquid; it’s OK if the liquid doesn’t completely cover the cabbage at this point, though it may. Refrigerate the kimchi to finish fermenting until it’s sour, 2 to 3 weeks and up to 6 months, at which point it will be very, very sour and should be eaten or turned into jjigae. Check (and taste!) the kimchi every 2 to 3 days both to familiarize yourself with the fermentation process but also to allow gas to escape.

Tips: 1/3 cup of soy sauce plus 1 to 2 tablespoons of doenjang or miso can be used as a vegan substitute for the fish sauce. The flavor won’t be the same, but it will still taste wonderful.

Many containers work for kimchi, but some are better than others. Glass jars with plastic lids work beautifully, as do stainless steel containers with metal lids that lock into place. Plastic containers with locking plastic lids work just fine for this recipe as well. All of these can be found online or at Korean supermarkets and work well for kimchi since the lids aren’t airtight. Avoid using Mason jars with airtight lids since they can explode as gas builds up during the fermentation process.

Baek Kimchi (White Kimchi)

By Eric Kim

More prominent in the northern parts of the Korean Peninsula, baek (meaning “white”) kimchi is considered the predecessor to today’s more commonly known red, spicy napa cabbage kimchi. (Red chile peppers didn’t arrive in Korea until the late 16th century.) Without any chile, this kimchi lets the sweet, natural flavors of the cabbage shine, with a briny pickled taste that is salty, refreshing and full of zingy ginger. If your daikon doesn’t come with any greens on top, then one bunch of Tuscan kale is a good substitute that offers wonderful bitterness and balance; just add chopped large pieces during Step 1.

Yield: 1/2 gallon

Total time: 2 hours, plus 2 days’ fermenting

1 medium head napa cabbage (2 to 2 1/2 pounds), any dirty outer leaves removed

1 medium daikon (6 to 8 ounces), plus green parts if available

3 tablespoons coarse kosher salt or 5 tablespoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)

1 medium Asian pear, peeled, quartered and cored

1 small yellow onion, peeled and quartered

10 garlic cloves, peeled

1 (2-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/2 cup fish sauce

3 scallions, trimmed

1 small carrot, peeled (optional)

1. Dry-brine the cabbage: Rinse the head of cabbage under cold running water, making sure to get in between the leaves. Trim the root end off the cabbage and cut crosswise into 1-inch-thick slices, carving out the core if it’s especially big and tough. Transfer the cabbage strips to your largest bowl. If your daikon came with green tops, cut them off the daikon and add them to the bowl. Sprinkle over the salt and toss with your hands until evenly distributed. Set aside to brine at room temperature until the hard cabbage leaves shrink and become wet and limp (but are still crunchy), 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

2. Rinse the cabbage: Fill the bowl with cold water and swish the leaves around to rinse off the salt (and to clean off any remaining dirt). Lift the leaves out of the water and transfer to a colander. Repeat once or twice, until the cabbage leaves still taste discernibly salted, but not so salty that you can’t eat them like salad. Rinse out the bowl.

3. Make the sauce: To a food processor, add the pear, onion, garlic, ginger and sugar and process until the mixture is so finely chopped that it is almost puréed. Transfer the sauce to the empty bowl and stir in the fish sauce. Cut the scallions into 1-inch-long pieces and thinly slice the daikon and carrot, if using, into coins. Add the vegetables to the sauce. Stir to combine. Add the drained cabbage and toss with clean hands until well combined.

4. Transfer the sauced cabbage to a clean 1/2-gallon jar, using your hands to gently pack it down. (A few air gaps are fine; they’ll fill with liquid over time.) This amount of cabbage should fill the jar, leaving about an inch of room at the top. Top the jar with any sauce left in the bowl. Loosely close with a lid (see Tip). Wash your hands and rinse off the jar.

5. Let the jar of kimchi begin fermenting on the kitchen counter at room temperature for 2 to 3 days, “burping” it every 12 hours or so, which just means opening the lid to let out any excess buildup of gas. After this, the cabbage should have released even more of its liquid; it’s OK if the liquid doesn’t completely cover the cabbage at this point, though it may. Refrigerate the kimchi to finish fermenting until it’s sour, 2 to 3 weeks and up to 6 months, at which point it will be very, very sour and should be eaten or turned into jjigae. Check (and taste!) the kimchi every 2 to 3 days to familiarize yourself with the fermentation process.

Tips: Many containers work for kimchi, but some are better than others. Glass jars with plastic lids work beautifully, as do stainless steel containers with metal lids that lock into place. Plastic containers with locking plastic lids work just fine for this recipe as well. All of these can be found online or at Korean supermarkets and work well for kimchi since the lids aren’t airtight. Avoid using Mason jars with airtight lids since they can explode as gas builds up during the fermentation process. — NYT