Learning kimchee, by trial and error

By Gene Lee

Kimchi… People either love or hate it. If you were born into it like I was, 99.99% of the time you love it. Koreans, especially older ones, are so fanatically addicted to this dish that they are probably the only race group that will immediately go looking for a Korean restaurant in their first hours on vacation in Rome. I am not kidding.

I am not quite as obsessed as the older generation but understand this craving. Over a decade ago I lived in Aspen, CO, which is hundreds of miles away from Denver - the closest city that I knew of (at the time) that had Korean restaurants. One month into being fortified in that little Hollywood ski town, the cravings for the hot Korean stews, various Banchan (small side dishes) vegetables, steaming bowl of rice and the addictive sour crunchiness of Baechu (cabbage) kimchi started scratching at my salivary glands. I could make the barbeque meats, substandard versions of the soups, and steam the Mahatma white rice that you see in every grocery store in America, but I could not make nor find kimchi anywhere.

Three months into my stay there my cravings for better Korean food, and especially the tangy and fiery flavors of kimchi, reached a fever pitch. That was that. I set out for Denver alone on a Saturday morning with a few scribbled restaurant listings from the cities’ Yellow Pages (the internet and wi-fi foothold really was not common in households at that time). When I got there, I found myself in a part of town akin to Atlanta’s Buford Highway. One long road with all sorts of ethnic eateries, peppered with a few Korean restaurants here and there. It even had the same sort of run-down look to it.

Needless to say, I got my fill that day and then some. Imagine if you’ve been lost in the desert for 3 days without food and water and you cross over a sand hill, and lo and behold there’s a Denny’s. Gorging ensued.

Even though I am closer to places that sell it pre-made in abundance, something always gnawed at me to be able to execute this recipe. Empty store-bought kimchi jars were overflowing in my condo reused as dry food storage, kitchen utensil holders or makeshift grease traps. And I was tired of having to drive 20-30 minutes out of my way on a bi-monthly basis just to buy it (even though it sure beats the 4 hour drive I had to make in Colorado).

Presently, I have made feeble to whole-hearted attempts at making my own version of Baechu kimchi. I have referenced multiple online and print recipes and sought advice from ex-pats and family friends all over. I was met with disaster in my first attempt, and miscalculated disappointments in later efforts. Eleven attempts, multiple hours, and a skinnier wallet later, I have finally made a batch that I personally deem worthy to eat. My recipe has been a hybrid of all written and verbal research that I have collected over the years combined with a sense of “trial and error” intuition that none of the online or cookbook recipes ever conveyed.

The successful execution of this recipe may have been more rapidly accomplished with a patient teacher. Most kimchi recipes are taught and passed down through the Korean family, but because of the plethora of affordable dining options in this country and degree of difficulty of making kimchee, my interest in perfecting it did not peak until years after my family and I lost our mother. She was the only one in my family that knew how to make it - she learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, and so forth. The only things I had to go on were my eroding childhood memories, print and online recipes, and verbal suggestions from helpful Korean ex-pats around town.

The first several batches I made were wholly inedible. The texture was like plastic, and what I presume to be either misbalanced or missing ingredients caused a metallic taste. The next few batches were closer in color and appearance, but still misguided by sub-par recipes condensed to single simplistic paragraphs in cookbooks written by Korean authors. Shame on them…these recipes called for 2-3 cloves of garlic and 3-4 days of room temperature resting. That is just too little of an amount of garlic, and 48 hours at room temperature pushed my kimchi past the point of no return.

The last few samplings started to look and smell closer to the real deal, but certain important techniques were omitted, throwing off a batch entirely. I could sense I was getting closer, but there was either too much water, the Gochugaru (Korean Red Pepper Powder) was not fresh enough, or there was not enough sweetener to balance the flavor.

But last weekend, the stars and planets all aligned, and armed with determination I finally executed a successful batch of kimchi. The smell and taste of the fresh fiery pepper, fish sauce, and garlic, co-joined with the springy pickled flavors of the cabbage, danced around in my mouth, and quickly affirmed that all those hours of labor were ultimately worth it.

I can now hope to one day pass on an important part of my heritage to the next generation of my bloodline, which has been muddled by my laziness and the conveniences of modern Western society. However, my fine-tuning of this recipe, until it reaches my idea of perfection, will continue.

To view Gene’s kimchee recipe, check out his webpage dedicated to kimchee here. Also check out Gene’s food blog, eatdrinkman.blogspot.com. If you'd like to be a guest blogger for Omnivore, please send your ideas to besha.rodell@creativeloafing.com.

(Photos by Gene Lee)