How to Make Kimchi 101

Not this past Saturday but the one before me and a friend had a chance to make kimchi! For those of you who don't know, kimchi is the most essential part of the Korean diet. It is served with EVERY meal. It is basically fermented cabbage. Every year the women in the family make a year's supply of kimchi and it's an all-day event.

Originally I thought me and the friend were just going to stand around and watch. Oh no. We were the only people the lady invited over to help make the kimchi. When we arrived I was completely overwhelmed at what I saw. There was a HUGE bowl of red sauce sitting on the counter, 3 stacks of empty buckets, a huge pile of radishes, and piles of various green vegetables.  But this wasn't all the ingredients. Not long after we arrived a man showed up carrying a box of cabbage. Then he went back downstairs and came up with another box. And another, until there were 6 or 7 boxes stacked on top of each other!

This reminds me of the story of The Little Red Hen by Florence White Williams. The hen planted the wheat, harvested the wheat, milled the wheat, baked the bread, and ate the bread. And that's what we did (except for making the bowl of red sauce). We shredded the radishes, chopped the greens, blended the ginger, chopped the onions, poured the krill, added the pepper, mixed it all into the red sauce, stuffed the mixture into the cabbages, and ate the kimchi! Eating it fresh out of the bowl was awesome. But enough descriptions. Here are the pictures!