In my second year of college I was invited to a Korean friend’s house for the first time in my life. They were like any other family with video games and kids running around the house, but there was something special once you opened the refrigerator. It was that smell that ate up everything in its way. It was kind of a gas that emanates through anything it can get a hold of. The apples had that smell. The milk had that smell. Even my friend Joseph’s little brothers had that smell.
At first glance it was the smell that makes you want to run away, but at the same time it was a curious smell that I grew to know as the Kim’s family smell. Living in a small suburb of Chicago I didn’t get a lot of opportunity to meet Korean people and here I was nose to nose with a Korean family.
Part of the smell reminded me of sauerkraut or strong pickles, but this was something even more powerful. I was determined to find out what’s that smell? That’s when I was introduced to kimchi. One day Joseph’s mom said, “Would you like to try some kimchi?” Joseph’s little brother and sister were just standing there at the door of the kitchen staring at me.
They must have wondered, “What will happen to the white guy with the big nose? Will he really eat the kimchi? Will he survive?” Well I tried it and they were right, I couldn’t stand it. Kimchi was just too powerful for me. I couldn’t even swallow it. I felt like I ate the hottest most sour and somehow popping and alive thing ever. My mouth couldn’t contain the flavor and I didn’t want to see kimchi again.
Every time I came near their house I was reminded of that smell and the ever powerful taste of kimchi. Still I wondered how any food could be so pungent.
That smell was the smell of fermenting cabbage. Just like grapes ferment into wine and cucumbers ferment into pickles, cabbages and other vegetables ferment into kimchi. Fermentation is the digestion of sugars into acids and gases and alcohol. Kimchi is broken down by bacteria that is alive.
The fermentation process of kimchi is very delicate. A little bit too much salt and too cool and you get crunchy vegetables and not enough salt and a warm environment will give the kimchi a really tangy, sour almost knock you out flavor and that’s what the Kim’s had in their kitchen.
When the balance of salt and temperature are right the lactobacilli thrive and preserve the kimchi through an anaerobic process. They make lactic acid as a by-product or digestion, which creates an acidic environment lowering the pH and preserving the cabbage like pickling. It’s the lactobacilli that create the smell as a byproduct of carbon dioxide and the amount of smell you get is relative to time, heat and salt concentration. These are called “variants” in the kimchi process. These variants will determine the amount of pungent smell you will get from kimchi. And this is why the kimchi refrigerator was invented. The kimchi refrigerator keeps kimchi at the prime temperature for fermentation while not allowing the kimchee to go overboard and create a massive stink overnight.
There is a fine line between the best food in the world and sour pickles. Hopefully we can master those techniques and enjoy the flavor of the tastiest food in the world. In this journey you will also see how I became addicted to kimchi. What the funk!!
For my friends in America who haven't tried Kimchi yet consider ordering some. This is powerful stuff though. On a hot summer day you might witness a kimchi explosion. It won't burst the bag but it may swell up. That's the power of kimchi. In the next coming blog entries I'll give you some recopies to make kimchi yourself and the best ways to eat kimchi.