Making Kimchi in Korea

Kimchi is wonderful.  I ate it growing up but started liking it only recently.  It is similar to a spicy food addiction.  Its hard to explain but I crave it all the time. Making kimchi is not something I ever really imagined myself doing, I always saw older ladies in Korea making it.

Kimchi is a “traditional Korean fermented side dish”… which means that it is served with the main dish (rice).

Today I made some kimchi with several friends.  It turned out to be quite fun. This is not really meant to be a recipe for making kimchi because I didn’t get all the ingredients from my friends who were showing us how to make it.  They kept saying that each ingredient was homemade or home grown and difficult to find.

Instead of trying to track down all the ingredients, I just took pictures of the kimchi making process.

If you want to try and make this on your own, the kitchn does a good job of explaining it.

I should also mention that we are making southern Korean style lettuce kimchi. There are a ton of different types.

Making Kimchi Gallery

This was some kind of lettuce leaf. They told me what it was in Korean but I can’t remember (help anyone?)

These were lettuce heads. The main item for the kind of Kimchi we were making. These were grown right here in Korea

Here we have some good taste kickers for the Kimchi, some shredded pears (korean pears ofcoarse), a bit of shredded ginger (smells great), and also shredded garlic

This was one of the more difficult parts of the process (I didn’t do it) We had to stir all the ingredients together with some kind of rice that was boiled and prepared beforehand. Lots of stiring

Then we took the lettuce heads and applied the sauce to it. Seems easy enough but can be tough

Here’s how one of my friends started his lettuce head. Just plop a bit of kimchi sauce on it and the start to rub it down

New fresh kimchi in the container. This stuff will be prime for eating soon. I like eating fresh kimchi but waiting for it to marinate a bit is also quite tasty