Kim chi Making

          

‘Kim chi’ is a traditional fermented dish in Korea. ‘Kim chi’ is pickled cabbage, radish, cucumber, etc, with salt and seasoned spices of ginger, pepper, garlic. Then they are fermented in low temperature. Fermenting ‘Kim chi’ isn’t only the way of storing for a long time, but also creates several organic acids, so it becomes good fermented food. Kim chi is a source of various minerals and vitamins. And because there weren’t much fresh vegetables available in winter in the past, our ancestor found a way of storing them. So we make ‘Kim chi’ in autumn, ferment them throughout the winter and eat them. By making ‘Kim chi’ for my family this winter, I undertake new challenge to see the process of it making and not only watching but actually participated in the process. From the beginning of the process, it was hard to find the ingredients to make Kim-chi in Moscow. Fortunately, there were basic ingredients which we need to make the sauce, but some of additional ingredients were unable to find even in Korean supermarket. Because those we were missing were additional ingredients, it wasn’t really big problem to miss them out. That was the first problem we faced. Next one was the length of time required to pickle the vegetables before we put sauces on them. We pickle the vegetables; before saucing with only salts and with the sauces. The first pickling is much more important because if we pickle them for too long, the vegetables will become too soft and it will be hard for us to pickle later on. So it was hard to manage the time but we managed it somehow. The last problem we come across was the ratio of the sauces. This one, I followed my mother’s recipe; pepper, salt, sugar, ginger, garlic, etc, and while we were making the sauces, we pickled the vegetable to save time.

Also I develop new skill of making them. I realised how many ingredients I need, to make a box of "Kim-chi"; ginger, pepper, garlic, cabbage, radish, cucumber, other spices to make the sauce. I also realised that before we start to put sauces on the cabbage, radish, cucumber, etc, we need to pickle them and put the sauces on and then pickle them again. It takes about a week to a month to be fermented and after that, we can eat it just the way it is or we can make lots of other dishes from it.