Home » Travel » Korean Culture » Korean Food: Kimchi

Korean Food: Kimchi

© Susan Johnson-Roehr

I still remember my first encounter with kimchi as a breakfast food even though many years have passed since that time. Nothing will wake a drowsy person more quickly than the sharp smell of fermented cabbage, hot pepper and garlic at 6 a.m. To be honest, I’ve never come to fully appreciate kimchi as a replacement for my breakfast cereal, but with time I have come to understand what a special role kimchi plays in Korean society.

Kimchi has been produced in the land of Korea for some 3,000 years. The first literary reference to this pungent food comes in the Book of Odes, China’s oldest collection of poetry. This record speaks of a pickled cucumber represented by the Chinese character “ju” (pronounced “cho” in Korean). Other references more humorously indicate that Confucius was not too fond of the smell of kimchi and would wrinkle his nose when he had to eat it.

A more romantic account is the legend of the poor farmer who had little but cabbage to his name. He carried his small stash of cabbage to the sea to wash it, and in the process, noticed that his skimpy heads of cabbage seemed to plump up under the salt water. Hoping to produce enough bulk to feed his hungry family, he left the cabbages in the salt water on the theory that a longer soaking in the sea would make the heads even larger. Alas, overnight, the salt water played a cruel trick on the farmer, shrinking the cabbage rather than making it grow. Disgusted with his fate, the farmer ate the shrunken cabbage and discovered the taste of the earliest pot of kimchi.

A more practical account would point out that the pickling and salting of vegetables allowed for long-term storage of foodstuffs that would otherwise not be available in the winters in the area we now call Korea. And although the farmers were probably not thinking about getting the daily recommended amount of their vitamins, kimchi provides good quantities of vitamins A and C, as well as calcium and iron.

Thus, Kimchi has long been an integral part of the Korean diet both traditionally and nutritionally. This spicy combination of fermented vegetables, salt, red pepper and garlic is a staple in the Korean diet, and together with rice, forms the basis of almost every Korean meal. There dozens of variations on a kimchi theme—the dish changes with the seasons, and different regions of Korea are known for particular kimchi blends.

The copyright of the article Korean Food: Kimchi in Korean Culture is owned by Susan Johnson-Roehr. Permission to republish Korean Food: Kimchi in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.