Home made Kimchi?

K

Kunmui

New member
On Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:59:11 -0500, Omelet
wrote:


Hi Omelet. Kimchi is some seriously good stuff! I've been eating it my
entire life.

Here's some basics for you before you start making your own.

1. It can be at a "No-Heat" level or as hot as you like it. All
variations of this are available in Korea. The hot version is by far
the most popular and thus, the easiest to find.

2. It can be made and eaten as fresh. Fermented Kimchi is again, the
most popular and thus the easiest to find, but lots of Koreans who
have problems with the fermented type, make and eat the fresh,
unfermented type.

3. It can literally be flavored with any ingredient you like, as long
as it not something that might spoil in those conditions. The flavor
is suited to the maker and those who agree with the makers tastes.

There are hundreds of recipes out there. I've always bought mine from
Asian Markets throughout my life, but have eaten at many homes where
it was made by my friends. I love both the fresh and fermented
versions.

Here's a very nice page on it:

http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/easy-kimchi

If you do a "Kimchi Recipe" search on Google, you'll find enough
recipes to make you stagger. First, decide if you want fresh or
fermented. Then look over the ingredients and decide which one sounds
the best to your tastes.

Good luck to you! I might get off my lazy butt and make my own someday
also! I eat about a pint of it per/week, so making my own would save
me a little money. The market I buy it at for fresh is only 2 miles
from me and charges on $3 a pint for their fresh.
 
On Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:26:34 -0500, Omelet
wrote:


Ha! You're cracking me up! I love fish sauce as a seasoning!

There is one cardinal rule to making Kimchi; you must like it when
you're eating it.

The basic flavors and textures are the cabbage and peppers/onions.

Anything else like fish sauce, oysters, squid, seaweed, green onions,
carrots, squash and seeds of one sort or another, is going to
complement the flavor and alter it a bit.

Roasted and dried green and red bell peppers can also be added. They
will fill in the color in more mildly peppered batches.

The secret to Kimchi is that its poor peoples food. When crops are
slim, whatever is cheapest is that years Kimchi ingredients. If money
is not the issue, then you put in your "Dream" ingredients; those that
make you the happiest when you eat them and are salad type
ingredients.

Using a touch of Brown Sugar might be interesting instead of regular
white sugar. A bit of Curry might add a hint of difference too.

(Note: My spell checker just told me no words were misspelled. I don't
trust that sneaky bastid!)
 
Omelet wrote in news:ompomelet-1AC457.21192711042011
@news.giganews.com:

to


LOL!! You'd get on well with the SO...... she likes her fish to taste like
chicken :-)

And shark/flake is one of her favourites.

And I *cannot* get away with adding fish sauce to any Thai curry I make,
she can smell the damn stuff before she even tastes it!@!



--
Peter Lucas
Hobart
Tasmania

Nothing ever truely dies
the Universe wastes nothing
everything is simply... transformed
 
On the subject of Kimchi.........

Kimchi as Medicine

While more and more Westerners are turning up their noses at sauerkraut,
Koreans and other Asians are eating more kimchi. This is at least in part
out of fear of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the deadly
pneumonia that left Korea virtually untouched while sickening people
throughout most of Asia in 2003. Many inside and outside of the country
believe that kimchi kept Koreans safe from the disease.

As Korean scientists have proven, beneficial microbes in kimchi can
overpower bacteria such as Helicobacter pylori, Shigella sonnei, and
Listeria monocytogenes. Scientists are now cultivating kimchi microbes in
hopes of using them for mass production of a new kind of antibiotic.

Besides killing bacteria, kimchi may fight viruses. A team at Seoul
National University reported in 2005 that an extract of kimchi helped in
treatment of chickens infected with avian flu. After further studies, the
team hoped to distribute the remedy to poultry farms across Korea.

In guarding human health, kimchi battles more than microbes. Scientific
studies show that high consumption of cruciferous vegetables reduces the
risk of breast cancer. Korea has one of the world's lowest incidences of
this disease.

Korean scientists have studied kimchi at least as thoroughly as their
Western counterparts have studied sauerkraut. The scientists have found
that fresh cabbage kimchi is actually more nutritious than unfermented
Chinese cabbage. When kimchi tastes best--before it becomes overly sour--
its levels of B1, B2, B12 and niacin are twice what they were initially,
and its vitamin C levels equals that of fresh cabbage. Scientists have
also found that undesirable bacteria and parasites are destroyed during
fermentation.



--
Peter Lucas
Hobart
Tasmania

Nothing ever truely dies
the Universe wastes nothing
everything is simply... transformed
 
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:19:27 -0500, Omelet
wrote:


Well, I can say that I've never seen any Kimchi without cabbage in it,
so I guess there is one rule...hehe
 
Landon wrote:


dsi1 already posted a recipe for cucumber kimchi. Kimchi is commonly made
from daikon or turnip. I've had bean sprout kimchi in Korea. The word
"kimchi" means more than you think it does.

Bob
 
Bob Terwilliger wrote:

oh lordie, Cucumber is one of my favorites.
Sitting down at the Korean restaurant near me, they bring about 6-8
assorted little dishes of various kimchis over to be enjoyed with the meal.
 
On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 03:25:49 -0400, Goomba
wrote:


I guess I'll have to try finding a Korean restaurant near me. I
haven't seen one in the St. Augustine area, but with the hundreds of
restaurants here, I could have easily missed it.

I have several friends who are Korean, and attend get-togethers at
their houses where there are a lot of Korean dishes. I may have seen
the types of Kimchi without cabbage and even tried it without knowing
that it was Kimchi. I have never turned up my nose at any type of food
without having first tried it.

Asian food is by far my favorite of all Ethnic foods. My next trip to
the "Oriental Market" in Jacksonville, Florida, I'll have to ask about
the cuke Kimchi. The only type I've seen there is the cabbage type.

Thanks to you and the others for the information.
 
On 4/12/2011 5:07 AM, Landon wrote:

My wife spent her early years in Montana until her mother and a friend,
along with another couple, drove their car off of something steep and
precarious. They all perished, leaving my wife and her 6 siblings
without a mom. My understanding is that 12 kids lost their parents that
day - some of them lost both. Anyway, one day, my father-in-law came
back from Korea with a bride and a caretaker for the kids and that's how
my wife, who is of Irish stock, came to be raised on kim chee.

The thing about hard-core Korean kim chee is that it causes a
distinctive, spicy smell to surround your body. Some of it is from your
breath but a lot of it comes off the skin. My guess is that it's
possibly caused by fermented garlic. I never found it offensive, rather,
it was a heady scent that was more than a little intoxicating and would
leave me slightly disoriented.

It took a couple of rides in an elevator with some well off Korean
ladies before it became apparent about the true nature of this scent.
When we got married, the smell disappeared although I could always tell
when my wife would have lunch with her mom. The local style kim chee
won't produce this effect, only Korean style will. These days she rarely
eats the real stuff but you could say that kim chee plays a big role in
those early days of my wife and I. Kim chee magic, I guess.
 
On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:06:42 -1000, dsi1 wrote:


That's a fascinating story. What a tragedy to live through as a child!

I love the deeply fermented Kimchi, (gimchi, kimchee, kim chee) also.
I don't eat it often, as it does tend to make the entire house smell
like it for hours after having it exposed. The same with cooked
cabbage.

Just had some kimchi last night at a local Chinese restaurant that was
perhaps the worst I've ever eaten. It was fresh and WAY too much
vinegar was in it. Pucker city!

I'm thinking hard about getting one of the kimchi fridges. What a cool
idea, (no pun intended).

I think perhaps when someone eats kimchi, the odor of it permeates
their clothing also. I've had people come from 100 feet away to ask me
"What in the hell are you eating?" when I took some to work for lunch.
Ha! I'd offer them some and the few that tried it either said they
hated it or loved it. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground in
regard to kimchi.
 
On 4/15/2011 2:04 AM, Landon wrote:

My wife was one of the younger kids and she barely can recall her mom.
Her older sister and brothers took it pretty hard, at least that's the
way it seems to me.


It was probably some version made by a Chinese or Vietnamese guy. A
recipe for disaster? My dad had a bowl of "ramen" in Sweden. The Chinese
cook told him that he could make him a real bowl but it turned out to be
spaghetti in chicken soup. That was a disaster.


My in-laws had a full size refrigerator in one of their bedroom. When I
first saw it, I thought to myself "Now there's something you don't see
everyday." Ironically, It turns out that was one of the more relatively
normal behaviors that I got to see with this family.
 
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:46:00 -1000, dsi1
wrote:


There was a family with 12 children on my street when I was about 10,
and they went on a family outing of some kind. The Dad was driving and
stopped under an overpass to check a map and a big Semi hit them,
killing the entire family except for the one boy who stayed home with
the flu.

I didn't know them well, but that boy was so traumatized that he was
like a zombie after that. I felt so sorry for him, but he was 18 and I
was 10, so I never got a chance to talk to him and express my sorrow
to him for his loss.

It was the "Haynes" family in Rockville Maryland. Must have been about
1962 or so.


Korean Kimchi is the only type I've ever eaten that I really liked.
Beef is another food that was terrible every time I've eaten it at a
Chinese place. Overcooked to the point of being rubberized and
inedible.


My bedroom is full of bookcases overflowing with books. No way I could
fit a fridge in there!

The Kimchi fridges are expensive, but I'll bet they are very good for
Kimchi. The one I saw that I liked the most had several areas in it
that could each have a different temperature. How cool is that?

It's on my list of things to get for my Pantry.
 
On Apr 15, 11:44?am, Landon wrote:

That's pretty awful. A great tragedy. The actor Kam Fong of Hawaii 5-0
fame lost his wife and kids when a couple of planes smashed into his
house. What a terrible burden to be the last survivor of your family
and have to carry on alone.


I've seen some really big ones that go for $3K. That was a shock. How
much kim chee can a family eat? Anyway, I suspect that the Koreans
consider it a status symbol and that the rich guys have such monsters
and show them off with pride.
 
Landon said:

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:18:24 -0700 (PDT), dsi1
wrote:

Yikes! 3K isn't going to happen for this. I'll look and see if I can
find a small one. I can also use it for other fermenting of veggies.
 
Back
Top