Salted napa cabbage ready for kimchi-making. Photo: Joseph Steinberg / Flickr via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Our family still gets together for gimjang. We make the kimchi, divide it up, and take our portions home. That's an important part of getting food ready for the year. Enough work that you might wonder why we bother, given that you can just buy the stuff. Fair question.
Gimjang comes up a lot around this time of year. Someone has to settle on a day. Someone needs containers. And if you're lucky enough to be offered some kimchi afterwards, there's more to think about than how to carry it back without leaking juice on the subway.
Is gimjang just another word for making kimchi?
No. You're making a supply of kimchi for winter, usually with other people, and sharing it out. Making a little kimchi for dinner doesn't quite describe the same thing. Think less cooking demonstration, more getting the household stocked up.
The wording on UNESCO's 2013 listing is worth a look: ‘Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea.’ Making AND sharing. The second half of that name matters as much as the first.
UNESCO isn't laying down one approved seasoning mix for every family and region. That's in the UNESCO description, not an exception to it. There isn't a master recipe against which you're supposed to grade your friend's mother's kimchi. Please don't try. And the heritage listing isn't a quality seal on a supermarket jar.
Why wait until late autumn?
You're getting ready for winter. The traditional season is late autumn, with the weather helping decide when to start. But not everybody lives in the same weather, or has the same free weekend.
The Korea Heritage Service traces the preparation back through the year. Seafood for fermenting in spring. Salt bought in summer. Red peppers dried and ground later on. Then the big autumn job. You can see how much planning used to sit behind the cabbage in front of you. It doesn't mean a household today has to shop on that timetable.
If somebody invites you, ask them for the date. Searching for ‘the gimjang date’ won't get you far. This is the family version I'm talking about, by the way, not a recommendation for a kimchi festival.
Why get several households involved?
There's work to share, and food to share afterwards. There are vegetables to prepare, salt and drain before anybody starts putting in the seasoning. Then it all has to be packed away. The number of cabbages and the number of hands make rather a difference, so there isn't much point putting one finishing time on it.
We make it together in my family and divide it to take home. For me, that connection is the point. It's important food for the year. Not a particularly glamorous way to put it, I know, but true.
You can buy kimchi, of course. Nobody has to organise a family gathering just to keep some in the fridge. What the heritage descriptions record is a way of making it together and teaching the next person how. Buying a jar doesn't mean you have failed some test of Koreanness.
Do you really need a separate kimchi refrigerator?
No, a separate appliance isn't a condition of making kimchi. I have two, which probably tells you something about how seriously kimchi gets taken in my household. That is my situation, though, not a rule for the rest of Korea.
On a kimchi fridge, ‘storage’ and ‘ripening’ aren't interchangeable buttons. LG's instructions put storage below the fermentation modes in temperature, and note that less salty kimchi may need a different setting. Keep the manual for that model handy. A temperature copied off a blog may not be right for the box in front of you.
Illustration: A Korean’s Take. A simplified comparison of buried onggi jars and dedicated kimchi refrigerators.
And please ask your host before fiddling with the controls. A compartment may be doing something quite deliberate. For a small tub and an ordinary fridge, just tell the person giving it to you what storage you have. Ask what to do with THEIR kimchi. Homemade tubs don't come with one shelf-life number. Get that advice from the person who made this batch.
What should a guest check before taking a tub home?
Ask when it was made and whether it has been left to ripen yet. ‘When did you make this?’ is a perfectly reasonable question. So is ‘How should I keep it?’ Those two questions will tell you more than the colour in a photo.
A container filled to the brim is asking for trouble. Follow its fill line: LG's guidance warns that liquid can spill over during fermentation. Carry it upright. A closed lid isn't a reason to leave the box on a warm counter.
One last question: do they want the box back? Easy to overlook. That box may be a loan, even when the kimchi isn't. Thank them for the food and check about returning the box.
Is homemade cabbage kimchi vegetarian?
Not automatically. Cabbage is a vegetable, yes. The seasoning may be another story. UNESCO mentions fermented seafood in its description, and fish sauce or salted shrimp can be in the mix. You wouldn't necessarily spot either in a picture.
Say what you can't eat before you accept it, especially with an allergy. Don't leave the other person to guess whether ‘vegetarian’ means fish sauce is fine. Ask about the actual ingredients. And if cross-contact matters, that's another question for the maker, not something I can promise about a kitchen I've never seen.
More from this blog
- Gimbap Is Not Sushi: Korea's Rice Roll, Its Origin and a Festival
- Why Korean Restaurants Make You Order for Two (and What Free Banchan Costs)
Anyway, the tub will be coming home with you, so these are questions worth asking before you're standing in front of your fridge. Would you eat yours freshly made, or wait until it gets properly sour?
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