I learned about Korean kimchi in my teens. It was one of those things that white American people would talk about while eating mashed potatoes.
Apparently Korean people would bury cabbage in their backyard and then leave it there for a month and then dig it up and eat it!
Now I have kimchi 2-3 times a week. My favorite weekend breakfast is over-easy eggs with jasmine rice and kimchi, with a little soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha.
Man I’d love to have an entire drawer of different kimchis in my fridge.
Do young people make their own kimchi and store it in the drawer, or do most go buy it premade and stock the drawer?
We have some really good stores now in my part of the southeastern US where I can get pretty much any kimchi imaginable, which means I have stacks of round plastic containers in my fridge.
I learned about Korean kimchi in my teens. It was one of those things that white American people would talk about while eating mashed potatoes.
Apparently Korean people would bury cabbage in their backyard and then leave it there for a month and then dig it up and eat it!
Now I have kimchi 2-3 times a week. My favorite weekend breakfast is over-easy eggs with jasmine rice and kimchi, with a little soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha.
Korean here, and the tradition is basically dead, partly because no one has a backyard anymore and partly we all have kimchi fridges.
The idea is pretty much the same. It keeps a lower temperature than normal fridges, just like how buried kimchi would be kept in.
Man I’d love to have an entire drawer of different kimchis in my fridge.
Do young people make their own kimchi and store it in the drawer, or do most go buy it premade and stock the drawer?
We have some really good stores now in my part of the southeastern US where I can get pretty much any kimchi imaginable, which means I have stacks of round plastic containers in my fridge.
Complicated! Kimchi that goes into the drawer is gimjang kimchi. Anything else doesn’t necessarily go into the drawer.
Gimjang kimchi making is very much a communal thing; often we make a year’s worth of kimchi around November, with all the family members gathered round. It’s almost ceremonial.
A lot of people still do it, including my family, but it’s dying out as well.