Made some kimchi last week because you know, Korean drama. Me and my cravings. *shrugs* Inexplicable.
By the way, Black 블랙 is hands down the best Kdrama I've watched. It's so good that I am rewatching it. The finale was quite dreadful, but every episode leading up to the second last one was phenomenal. Mind-blowing. (I have to admit Song Seung Heon just made the show that much better GOSH how can someone be that attractive ugh)
Ok back to the point of this post.
I followed a recipe from my favourite Korean Youtuber, Maangchi who creates the most adorable Korean cooking videos.
The process was not challenging, only laborious. I'm glad I chose to make the full recipe yielding over 3kg of kimchi because I don't think I'll be doing this again. To clarify, it tasted good, but I don't need to eat kimchi every day to want to have this in my fridge all the time. I do like the fact that they can keep for a few months. I have had more than a few occasions of not having kimchi in hand (or not having enough!) to make a dish I wanted to cook, e.g. kimchi fried rice, kimchi jjigae, kimchi pancake etc. so this will come in handy. I have a feeling I'll be 'kimchi-ed out' once I'm done with all 3kg haha.
I was surprised to know there was not a drop of acid (lemon juice, vinegar) in this recipe at all. Surprised because I've always found kimchi to be slightly tart? I learned later that the sour taste is from lactic acid, a byproduct of the fermentation which happens as the kimchi soaks in its own 'juice'. The longer the kimchi stays in the fridge, the sourer it becomes.
Which made me think, hang on. Isn't this the same as milk going bad??!
Thankfully not. Milk is not salty, but kimchi is. Lots of salt is used in kimchi to create an environment where good bacteria thrive, and harmful bacteria don't.
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