Kimchi Day 12 - The Eating

With the Thanksgiving holiday, my first opportunity to taste the fruits of my pickling efforts came on Monday night... and it was good! It was definitely not under seasoned... my main worry with the extra large cabbage I was dealing with... and I thought both the carrot and pear brought some nice sweet elements that were subtle yet noticeable. I think in retrospect I would have grated the ginger, not diced it and smashed it... it was somewhat jarring to bite into a piece of ginger, though certainly not unpleasant. I think the flavors could be a little better melded, as many of the tastes were quite distinct, but I presume that is a process that is ongoing over the weeks and months you have your kimchi... presumably "young" kimchi is going to be less melded than 3 month old kimchi... but that's only a suspicion that has yet to be tested.

Another possible reason for the less melded flavor could be that, as seen above, in the interest of reclaiming a jar as quickly as possible, I consolidated my kimchi as best I could before I put it into the refrigerator (compared to this)... and ate my first serving of kimchi out of the almost empty jar. It's conceivable that the more full jar... jam packed with pickling liquid... is distributing flavors around more. So my next taste will come from the full one as a test.

Next thing I have to do... hopefully before Christmas, but I guess there's not much of a rush... is make are some kimchi pancakes (kimchi jun) and kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae). I've obviously got quite a bit of options here with roughly a gajillion quarts of spicy Korean pickles.

If you're looking for the recipe I used for my kimchi, you can find it here.