An Unpublished Essay (on Kimchi From 2009)

Because I wrote this 10 years ago and now people want to know about kimchi and also here is my mother's kimchi recipe

This is an essay about kimchi that I wrote in 2009 (unedited, though I did put in one remark about Sriracha). I first tried making kimchi in 1993—this is that story. I present it to you as I wrote it in 2009. I subbed it to the SF Chronicle and various food magazines like Saveur, all of which responded by saying some iteration of “But we just published something about Korean food/kimchi this year already.”

And I’m glad to say kimchi has become easier to make, and the product, one that resembles my mom’s. And here’s a bonus: my mom’s radish kimchi recipe at the end

Things had gone horribly wrong.  I had decided to make kimchi on a blast of whim and arrogance and now the stuff in the jar was not a deep rich orange-red, it was neon pink.  I had never made kimchi before, but at the age of nineteen, I had assumed it would be simple, that something in my genetic code as a Korean would make me an automatic kimchi-maker.  Not so.  Not so at all.  I had made something that was not kimchi at all.

            My housemates had eyed the jar warily the last few weeks.  “THAT!” Diane would shout, “does NOT look like kimchi, dude!” 

            “You never know!  It might turn any second!”  I had my doubts, but I had hoped that perhaps this was like my childhood German Shepard, who as a puppy with her floppy ears and all-black coat looked nothing like the adult dog she turned into.  Maybe my kimchi would be the same.  Even though my mother’s kimchi never turned a neon pink. 

            I held onto my belief that this had to be kimchi because what kind of Korean cannot make kimchi?  Kimchi is a Korean passion—they say that if you don’t eat kimchi you can’t be considered Korean at all.  Indeed, even my childhood dog ate kimchi and we considered her an honorary Korean-American-German Shepard.

            But there the jar was, a bright neon pink and the day had come to finally open the jar.  We cringed as I unscrewed the lid, expecting the contents to smell like a junkyard.  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Paul.  He had been looking forward to homemade kimchi and happily urged me on my project as my biggest supporter; his sudden doubt smacked of betrayal.  “Don’t you want to open it outside?” 

            “What?” asked Diane, “And piss off the neighbors?” 

            To our surprise, it did not smell all that bad at all.  It smelled tangy and sweet, like sweet relish.  I ventured a taste.  “Ewww!” came the chorus, as I bit into a chunk of pink daikon radish.

            It tasted like a very sweet radish pickle.  It was not grotesque at all, even though this was seriously not kimchi.  In many ways, it resembled Japanese pickled ginger (which is also sweet, tangy, and pink). 

            How could a Korean not make kimchi?  I was thankful that no one in my collegiate household was Korean so that the news could not travel that there, in Berkeley, lived a Korean girl whose kimchi could act as a beacon in the night for passing aircraft. 

            What had happened? 

Armed with my basic knowledge of college-level biology and chemistry, and very little knowledge about cooking and an immense amount of arrogance that can only come out of someone who didn’t cook all that often (“How hard could it be?”), I threw myself into this kimchi-making.  Without a recipe.  And with only a vague memory of watching my mother make kimchi in our backyard.

My mother would make several batches of kimchi in one sitting, often in November, when the traditional “kimjang,” the annual pickling of kimchi in Korea, takes place.  That, I am told, is when the cabbage and radish are in peak condition and of course it is before winter really settles in, the first reason pickling came into such vogue.  Pickling and preserving cabbage helped many of my Korean ancestors survive the peninsula’s harsh winters.  The Siberian winds do not touch Southern California, of course, but why screw with tradition?

Gathered around my mother were armloads of daikon radish, oblong napa cabbages, a big garden hose, large plastic bowls, and various spices.  She hardly wore rubber gloves herself but always told me, “Don’t be like mommy, wear rubber gloves when you make kimchi because you don’t want your hands to be stinky!” 

She chopped up the radish.  I remembered that she put some sugar in.  She put some hot pepper in.  And salt.  I couldn’t remember if she put in more salt than sugar, but I did remember that she prided herself on making a kimchi “that wasn’t so salty.” She was a salt-hater.  Nothing was worse than over-salting food in our household.  So I put in twice as much sugar as I did salt into the bowl of chopped daikon radish.  (Maybe experienced cooks, at this point, are beginning to wince). 

So far so good.  I didn’t know where I could find hot pepper (those were the days in which Korean grocery stores were very rare in Berkeley and besides, I didn’t have a car), but I did find some cayenne pepper in the pantry.  (Koreans might wince).  I put a little bit of that in.  And chopped green scallions of course.  The jar seemed empty, so I opened my fridge to see if anything would remind me of what might be missing.  A jar of dill pickles caught my eye.  Vinegar!  I splashed some vinegar into the mixture.  (Koreans who know how to make kimchi are definitely wincing now).  I filled up the empty, sterilized mayonnaise jar and sealed it up.  It couldn’t have been easier than that.

I was not entirely wrong in believing that the above concoction would make a good pickle.  My plebeian instincts were correct.  Pickling requires a brine of some sort (salt and water) and some sort of acid, whether the acid is produced by fermentation or added directly to the mixture as with dill pickles.  If you look at any Western “pickled vegetable/onion/cucumber” recipe, you will see that the main ingredients are “pickling spices,” vinegar, salt, and sugar.  I was completely reasonable in surmising that “kimchi” (which after all, is pickled cabbage) was comprised of those ingredients.  But what I had come up with was closer to sauerkraut than to kimchi. 

Ironically, this failed first attempt when I was nineteen years old, sans vinegar, may have been the most authentic kimchi of all.

Kimchi, as we know it today, is familiar to all Koreans.  It is a national passion, just as vegemite is a passion in Australia.  As long as there is kimchi on the table, there is a meal.   

At its simplest, kimchi is pickled napa cabbage in a brine of hot pepper and salt. Though the most common kimchi is pickled napa cabbage, the name kimchi encompasses an entire cornucopia of contents, daikon radish, and cucumbers being the second most common kimchi types.  With all the passion regarding kimchi in Korea, it is no wonder that there are numerous kinds.  I imagine the first picklers must have been compulsive, pickling everything they could find.

But the kimchi we know today, which is a picture of cabbage or radish drowning in a bright red spicy pickle juice, does not resemble the first kimchi made in 7th century Korea.  Neither baechu (Chinese napa cabbage) nor red pepper, two popular key ingredients in modern kimchi, existed in Korea at the time.  The earliest stage kimchi was simply salted vegetables.

Red pepper came to Korea in the 1500s after Christopher Columbus first carried the seeds of the red pepper plant, along with tomatoes, corn, squash, and other seeds, from Mexico and  South America to Europe.  (Columbus, just to note, thought he had found a new type of black pepper though in reality the red pepper is really not related to pepper at all).  From there, red pepper traveled Marco Polo’s trade route to Japan and China and finally, Korea. It is hard to imagine kimchi without its fiery red color and spicy flavor, but once upon a time, it may have been a closer cousin to sauerkraut (the other famous fermented cabbage that accompanies the rich meat dishes of Germany).

Modern kimchi is really a fusion food.  During the 12th century, new types of kimchi appeared, with new spices and seasonings.  By the 18th century, red pepper became a standard ingredient in kimchi.

Chinese cabbage found its way into kimchi relatively late in the game.  It was only by the 19th century that Chinese cabbage entered Korean agriculture—which Koreans enthusiastically (and predictably by this point) pickled into cabbage kimchi, the archetype of kimchi today.  Chinese Mexican Korean fusion, anyone? 

*

As for taste, kimchi is hard to describe.  It is a pickle, but even cucumber kimchi bears very little resemblance to dill pickles due to the difference in fermentation processes.  Despite its red-hot fiery appearance too, kimchi is not as hot as one would imagine; I have had salsas that burned my mouth more than any kimchi out there.

I once read an Internet account of a Korean Jew who used kimchi on the Seder plate for Passover (as the “bitter” herb), and the Jewish part of me was very delighted, but the Korean part of me was puzzled.  For kimchi is not anywhere near “bitter,” it is more hot and vinegary and neither is it an herb. The closest thing I can compare it to is that sauce I like to call “rooster sauce” because it has a white outline of a rooster on the bottle: sriracha sauce.  But I fear that the audience for sriracha sauce may even be smaller than that of kimchi and so the comparison may not be so effective. [HAHA AUTHOR’S NOTE FROM 2019: SRIRACHA IS SO POPULAR NOW]

            The very thought of “hot pickled cabbage,” sends shivers of fear down many a non-Korean’s spines.  While on an English-speaking tour bus to the DMZ with my husband years ago, we heard an elderly Australian couple say, “We’ve tried everything but the kimchi.  That kimchi scares me.”  This, from the country that has vegemite!  But I suppose every country has something like that, some special priceless food that it has to protect by conjuring up a reputation that is too large to approach.  The Australians have Vegemite, the Japanese have natto, and the Koreans have kimchi. 

*

After my neon kimchi debacle, I retreated West.  West, as in Western foods. I was utterly crushed as a Korean cook.  My mother judged a cook by his or her ability to make kimchi. If she or he could not make good kimchi, my mother lost faith in his or her ability to make any other Korean dish. It is questionable (because pickling is not technically cooking) and a bit unfair to hinge an entire cook’s repertoire by her ability to pickle, but this is how important kimchi is.   “Let me see if they can really cook here,” she would say, sampling a new restaurant’s kimchi.  And though out of politeness she would not declare that at a friend’s house, I knew what was going through her mind as she reached for the kimchi first at any given dinner. 

I did not attempt making kimchi for over ten years.  I got my kimchi from my mother, who drove over large jars of the stuff every few months.  Or in a pinch, I would buy some at the Korean grocery.  It’s not like I’m the only Korean American who doesn’t know how to make her kimchi.

Over the course of that time in the West, I learned to make seared foie gras in wonderful reductions, osso bucco, a spectacular hummus, a perfect Jewish chicken soup, matzo balls that floated (and didn’t sink), chiffon cakes, and dozens of other western foods.  I felt some mastery of these dishes, and though I did cook Korean dishes (and yes, I do make some great Korean braised short ribs), they fell very much in the shadow of my failed kimchi.  A Korean cook who could not make kimchi could not cook.

Years later, however, I revisited kimchi.  Too many Korean American cooks are losing the art of making kimchi.   

I had to give it a try.

I consulted my mother’s recipe, scribbled down on a white envelope.  Without the fog of intimidation and fear, the steps seemed remarkably easy.  I who can bake a fluffy rosewater chiffon cake, I who can bake a wonderful brioche, I who can make gefilte fish from scratch, and concoct the most succulent roast chicken, could do this.  I stacked up the ingredients at the Korean grocery market: the jar of salted shrimp, daikon radish, scallion bunches and garlic cloves in my shopping cart made it obvious I was going to make kimchi, as obvious as butter, cocoa powder, vanilla, and bittersweet chocolate are to making homemade brownies.  The older “ajumma” ladies nodded their approval.  Here, among them in the market, was a young lady who would not let go of her roots!  The kimchi-making tradition would live on!  Make way for her cart!  Give her room!  Even the cranky middle-aged “ajussi” manager of the store managed to grumble, “Making some kimchi?  Good!” at me. 

Buoyed by this encouragement, I set out my mise en place in my kitchen: cubed daikon, my sugar, salt, red pepper flakes, minced garlic, chopped green scallions, and the jar of salted shrimp.  I consulted my scribbled recipe notes.  Add just enough hot pepper to cover the radishes.  The effect of the red pepper sitting on the daikon was like sprinkled glitter on a craft project.  I added garlic and scallions, sugar and salt.  Now I was in a rhythm.  I added the salted shrimp, which to me looked so lovely, a mess of pink tendrils.  I was moving down the list.  I made a paste out of flour and boiling water and added it to the radishes and tossed the entire concoction until well mixed.

So enmeshed was I in following the exact directions of the recipe (which ironically was not so exact as they were approximations of what I watched my mother do during her “kimchi demonstration” months earlier), I had forgotten a golden rule of mine.  I had neglected to taste my food as I cooked it.  It was not until the directions said I should put this whole mixture into an airtight container that I remembered to taste the raw kimchi.

It was way too salty. 

In a panic, I dialed my parents.  “Dad,” I said, “I need to ask Mom a question about kimchi.”

With no pause at all, my father yelled, “Mommy!  It’s Christine!  Kimchi problems!”  He didn’t bother to cup the receiver as usual.  He broadcasted my kimchi problems to all within earshot.

“Add some sugar,” my mother suggested.  I detected a hint of a giggle in her voice.  I knew this, why hadn’t it occurred to me? Sugar tempers saltiness, but even as I sprinkled an extra handful of sugar to the brew, I had my misgivings.  My kimchi was way too salty, but at least this time the raw mixture looked promising, it looked like kimchi and smelled like kimchi. 

I poured the mixture into an airtight container and set it out overnight at room temperature, and then put it into the fridge to ripen.  Over the next few weeks, the saltiness of the kimchi subsided (though the first two weeks had me very worried that this kimchi was so salty it might be inedible). 

Weeks later, I found the kimchi still did not taste right, even though at least this time it was not neon pink and sugary.  I was getting closer. 

*

The ingredients of a dish can sometimes be very surprising and yet very elemental.  These “secret ingredients” may include mayonnaise in a biscuit recipe or the multitudes of ingredients like orange peel in Coca Cola.  In kimchi, that secret ingredient is salted fish, most often taking the form of salted shrimp. 

            By now, some of you have raised your eyebrows (or perhaps gasped) at the repeated mentions of salted shrimp. Vegetarians who have been avid eaters of kimchi are shuddering—“I have eaten something with a face!”  Alas, I may have lost you as a kimchi eater forever.  Those of you who keep kosher and have happily eaten kimchi for years are horrified (though there’s a possibility the kimchi may have been made with salted anchovy (kosher) and not shrimp (not kosher)). Which leaves the rest of you peering into the kimchi looking for a hint of little baby shrimp (they’re not there, they’re part of the liquid stew by the time the kimchi’s ready for eating).

            What does salted shrimp have to do with pickling?  Salted shrimp is the ingredient that gives kimchi its unique flavor.  The other alternative to salted shrimp is salted anchovy, but by the looks of many Korean groceries and their fully stocked shelves of salted shrimp jars, salted shrimp is by far the more popular salted fish ingredient in kimchi. 

I quickly consulted the bible on food science, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking for the answer to this question.  Kimchi had an actual listing in the index! I quickly thumbed to his section on pickling, where kimchi was a highlighted example of pickling by fermentation.  Salted shrimp breaks down in the fermentation process and creates lactic acid, the very thing that makes cheese taste tangy and the thing that gives kimchi its unique flavor.  Plus, salted shrimp expedites the fermentation process (nothing like aging fish to move things along!).  Besides the unique flavor, the salted shrimp becomes one of the key reasons to kimchi’s health benefits: kimchi is high in calcium and other minerals and vitamin A and C.  For a country that is largely lactose intolerant, and a cuisine that is largely void of dairy products, kimchi fills a large gap in nutrition.  My father used to insist that kimchi was good for you—that it was as good as orange juice or milk.  I didn’t believe him until now.

The lactic acid also serves another role—it is the acid that makes pickling possible.  While you would add vinegar to cucumbers to make dill pickles (recall my panic adding of vinegar in my first attempt), pickled kimchi comes from the lactic acid created by the combined ingredients.  It’s akin to the Big Bang theory where everything comes together.  And it’s happening in a jar.  You know it’s working when your kimchi doesn’t turn neon pink.

What of flour?  Was it, too, a secret ingredient?  The flour mixture was a mystery to me until I called my mother up for insight into its role as a kimchi ingredient.  At first, I thought it might work as a thickening agent for the kimchi juice, or as a way to feed the fermentation process.  Of all the ingredients in my mother’s recipe, this flour paste seemed the most optional, as it rarely occurs in any other kimchi recipe I have come across in the stingy repertoire of English-language Korean cookbooks.  In fact, the majority of kimchi recipes lack this flour mixture as an ingredient.

What then, was its purpose?

I called my mother up.  “Oh,” she said, “It makes the kimchi more ‘shee un hae,’” the word for a particular kind of tasty, a kind of tasty that is fresh and zingy.  Koreans will often use this word to describe the last bite of something (often soup or a broth) very delightful to eat.  I know I am venturing dangerously into the world of “Engrish,” but it is like the exclamation mark at the end of a sentence.  This flour mixture, according to my mother, serves the purpose of giving kimchi and its broth extra flavor.

I was surprised to hear that this was not a North Korean kimchi ingredient, but an ingredient stemming out of southern kimchi-making traditions. “I learned about this ingredient from your [paternal] grandmother, who learned it from a chef renowned for his radish kimchi.  She went to his restaurant in your father’s ChoongChung-do province and it was so tasty, she asked him how he made it and learned that this was his secret ingredient.”  In my interested and shocked silence, my mother continued, “I’m not sure, but I think the people in Cholla-do province always use flour paste in their kimchi.”  My own mother’s kimchi was a fusion of different kimchi traditions.

As for the science equation of why this flour paste gives this dish more taste, there is no such entry on the effects of flour on pickling and fermentation in McGee’s text.  At the time of this writing, I have no answer, just as I have no answer as to why a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese makes almost anything tastier, and why I find ketchup such an invaluable condiment.

*

In the end, kimchi is a dish that does best left alone, after the initial combination of ingredients.  After all, in Korea, the traditional kimjang ends with large earthenware containers buried under the earth, left to ferment throughout winter.  That does not sound like a very high maintenance dish at all.  I just had to learn the ingredients, and more specifically, learn the secret ingredients as to what produces kimchi.

It should have made sense to understand that many things are learned; in reality, my brother and I did not come out of the womb eating kimchi, just as using chopsticks, forks, knives, and spoons are learned skills.  For those of you who find kimchi a challenge to eat, you can find comfort in the fact that many Korean children are “trained” to eat kimchi, and to learn to like its taste.

My brother and I spent our earlier childhood eating Japanese pickled daikon, the sweeter, milder cousin to Korean kimchi.  In between bites of rice and bulgogi, we would eat the daikon, or what we nicknamed “yellow kimchi.”  One day, my father brought out an extra glass of water to the table and announced, “Kimchi training!”  I have no idea why he decided that on the day we were going to graduate to real Korean kimchi, but he put the training wheels on the kimchi-eating-bicycle that day.

We dunked the kimchi slices into the glass of water, rinsing the spiciness off before eating it.  The red flakes swirled in the cloudy water.  It was not until we were well into school age that we graduated to the real thing, red hot pepper flakes and all.  I remember on that day, there was much applause.

*

Not only are there different kinds of kimchi but also many kimchi tastes throughout the regions of Korea.  We’ve already learned that some traditions use flour in their kimchi for instance.  Generally speaking, kimchi becomes spicier and saltier the farther you travel south on the peninsula. This is due in part to the cooler climate up North, with fewer requirements for preservation.  It’s not unusual for someone of North Korean descent to find kimchi in the southern provinces of Cholla-do or Kyongsang-do inedible.

Nowadays, though, these kimchi differentiations are eroding, with the Korean population moving towards Seoul.  Twelve million of the country’s fifty million population live in Seoul, and that has to have a homogenizing effect on kimchi; my own mother’s North Korean and Cholla-do combination of ingredients is an illustration of this kimchi assimilation.  Additionally, a large number of Koreans (including Korean Americans) in general do not make kimchi at home anymore but opt to buy it from the store.  Ironically, much of the kimchi supplied to stores in Korea are made in China (there was a brief health scare that caused home pickling to go on the rise in Korea, though home pickling is on the decline among Korean Americans).  Even so, the streets of Seoul in November, during “kimjang,” are filled with vendors selling napa cabbages piled waist-high, and daikon radishes the size of a child’s leg. 

Those who decide to learn to pickle at home also face challenges—if there is no family recipe at hand, you have to follow a recipe from a cookbook like Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall’s cookbook Growing Up In a Korean Kitchen.  Hepinstall’s family originates out of North Korea—if your family line comes out of the southern regions of Korea, there’s an immediate mingling of recipes right there.

Those who are horrified at this change have to keep in mind that kimchi has historically been a changing dish, and it will continue to change.  Besides, next to the subtle changes in kimchi taste, are even larger leaps in kimchi cuisine.  Now a global food, kimchi is turning up in hamburgers and as a pizza topping.  In Hawaii, one of the great bastions of fusion food, kimchi burgers are a regular occurrence on hamburger menus.  Most recently, kimchi is turning up as a garnish not unlike salsa in the most delicious hybrid of foods: the Korean BBQ taco.

Kimchi is an evolving dish, a process from beginning to end.  Even when it is overripe, sour and wilted, Koreans use this aged kimchi to make a kimchi jjigae stew.  It’s where old overripe kimchi goes to die, or rather, be eaten.  There are other venues that make it nearly impossible to waste kimchi; you can use it as stuffing for mandu (Korean wontons and dumplings) or make a soup out of it. 

The history of kimchi reflects the ways in which the dish has benefited from interactions with the world—one can only wonder what will come of the dish as it further evolves.

***

MY MOTHER’S RADISH KIMCHI RECIPE

INGREDIENTS:

2 daikon radish, chopped into 1 inch cubes

1/4 cup flour and approx. 1/2 cup water

1-2 tablespoons of “gochu garu” (Korean red hot pepper flakes)

1/2 cup sugar

1 bunch chopped scallions

2 tablespoons of salted shrimp (or other salted fish)

4 tablespoons of salt (or to taste)

12 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 oysters (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Put the cubed radish in a large mixing bowl.  Sprinkle the gochu garu (red hot pepper flakes) on the radish until the radish are just covered with the flakes.  Let rest.

While radish is “resting,” bring water to simmer in a small saucepan and add flour and mix until it makes a paste.  Let the flour mixture cool.

Add sugar and toss the radish mixture with your hands until well mixed.  Add scallions, garlic, salted shrimp and optional oysters and toss with your hands until mixed. 

Taste.

Add 4-6 tablespoons of salt, as necessary (the mixture should not be incredibly salty).

Take the cooled flour mixture off the stove and add it to the radish mixture and once again, mix with your hands.

Put into an airtight container and leave out for 24 hours at room temperature until fermented.  Then store in fridge for the next 3-4 weeks until ripened.