I just looked to see if yeast bread was technically a fermented product. I commented elsewhere of a local woman who makes bread from the yeast that she captures from the air. Apparently that is fermented bread:
According to the Korean guy (Aaron) making the video, kimchi does not necessarily need to be fermented. So that's one I will try, but I'll reduce the recipe by half.
That's interesting. Like most of us, I always heard of it being buried to ferment. I wonder if that was for temperature or to seal out the oxygen. Maybe it shielded the cabbage from any unwanted bacteria floating in the air...I know you cover sauerkraut, but I always thought that was to slow down evaporation.
Hmmm, I guess I lied about beer being the only fermented food I like. I also like yogurt, sour cream, etc. I went off half-cocked, as usual.
My first meeting with Kimchi was when I was serving in the Army in Seoul, South Korea, 1961-62. It was a shockingly different taste than anything else I had ever tasted! (I was 25 at the time) Hal
Yes! But it carried an after-odor with it from the garlic and spiciness. Before picking up your date, you would need a mouth rinse of Bourbon. If you TOOK your date to a Kimchi dinner, then you would BOTH need a bourbon mouth rinse afterward! Hal
OK. I got this in my grocery order last week. For some reason, I'm afraid to taste it. "Don't fear the Kimchi!!"
I have been thinking about trying kimchi again. I went to the Korean store and got a small container of the Napa cabbage kimchi and also of the cucumber kimchi, and it actually tasted better to me today. Maybe my body is telling me that i need it ? Anyway, I have some cabbage (regular cabbage) and I am going to try making a small batch of kimchi from that and see how it goes. I really want to like the stuff, because I know how healthy it is for a person, I just have to figure out a way of making it that i will actually like enough to eat. I also got a small bottle of Oyster Sauce to try. I tasted it, and it is wonderful, so I am going to make stirfry and add some oyster sauce to that, maybe today. You can really taste the oyster aftertaste, and I love oysters. I used to get the fresh ones at the store when we had a Kroger, but Walmart does not carry anything except canned ones.
That sounds good! I've cooked with oyster sauce a few times...as well as fish sauce, hoison sauce, etc. I think I read a couple of kimchi recipes that had instructions for either oyster or fish sauces. I believe that kimchi has a lengthy shelf (refrigerator) life...at least, the Chinese Napa cabbage version did. I was thinking of picking up the makings at my local Asian market. I'd be more likely to eat kimchi than I would unheated sauerkraut.
I went to an the Asian grocery store in Charlottesville today to get kimchi fixins, but their selection of Korean ingredients was very limited. The recipes I've seen call for Korean gochugaru chili flakes and admonish you to not substitute. I saw (and bought) a tub of gochugaru paste, thinking it would work as a substitute, and it won't. I picked up everything I need (Napa cabbage, daikon radish, ginger root, plus some stuff with a longer shelf life), and don't have the chili flakes. I just placed an Amazon order for the gochugaru chili flakes and some Korean fish sauce. It will arrive on Monday. It's not a great waste...the veggies were only a few bucks. But I was looking forward to making this tomorrow. In the meantime, I also bought a head of regular cabbage to make some sauerkraut. And this will give me time to research kimchi recipes.