In November Zak and I took a trip with our neighbors to make Kimchi in Seoul. The winter months are typically when kimchi is prepared and ready to be fermented. We took this trip with a group called WINK, it is a tour group based primarily out of Seoul that has trips available with English translators. This was the second trip I had done with them and I am overall satisfied with this organization aside from being a bit expensive for the quality of the tours.
It was a cold and rainy day and we ended up waiting about an hour for our bus out of Seoul to where we were making the kimchi but the rain eventually subsided and makgeolli appeared just in time for us to enjoy the experience! It is hard for some people to get past the fermented aspect of kimchi but if you give it a chance you just might fall in love with this sour spicy cabbage like I have.
The act of making kimchi is easier than I had previously thought. All you need is a salted cabbage and ingredients such as, salt, ginger, garlic, powdered red pepper, sugar and radish. Just rub your mixture of choice onto each cabbage leaf section, let it sit at room temperature for at least 48hrs and there you have it... home made kimchi! (Caveat: Kimchi must be prepared while under the influence of Korean rice wine)
(this is me keeping a look-out for the old Korean woman who pops up just to remind you that you are doing it allllll wrong)
If you want some live action checkout our youtube video:
We were lucky to have a great photographer with our group who has kindly allowed us to share his photos, if you are interested in visiting his blog it can be found here: Kimchibytes
Thanks for reading xxx
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