What is Kimchi?

Kimchi is a vegetable dish, most often presented as a side dish in any Korean meal. Kimchi is made by fermenting cabbage. Napa cabbage is generally the main ingredient, and the dish is usually fermented in brine with garlic, scallions, and ground pepper. It is usually finished with a hot chili sauce.

Kimchi is the most common Korean banchan (side dish) eaten with rice along with other banchan dishes.

After fermenting for a period of time at an appropriate temperature in a sealed container, the mixture of ingredients is turned into a nutritious food which is rich in vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and fiber. If you have ever made sauerkraut (or have seen it being made), the similarity is unmistakable. Unfortunately, foods with such distinct flavors have lost favor in today’s fast-food, superbland factory food.

This cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, offers an amazing history of food preservation and fermentation as well as recipes you can try in your own kitchen. It is well worth the read, and a simple perusal of the contents will stimulate your interest in natural ways to preserve food, which is what our ancestors used in the days before BHT and BHA.

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Salute to Salt

If you think that using plain old table salt is just peachy, you can stop reading now and scurry down to McDonald’s for your dinner. If you think that using any kind of salt is suicidal, then you need to read on. If you’re just plain curious about this mineral that is so much in the forefront of health and culinary news, then you may find this enlightening.

This is about real salt - salt that’s fresh from the ocean or freshly mined from glittering caverns.

Table salt isn’t really meant to be food. At least it shouldn’t be. It is a by-product of chemical processing and is nearly 100% sodium chloride, which, according to some pundits, is toxic to the human system. It goes through about eight different processing steps before it is released for sale for human consumption. Nearly all of the 84 naturally occurring minerals are stripped from it (regarded as “impurities”) and if iodized, it is bleached in order to make it attractive enough to the consumer.

There is always concern that we won’t get enough iodine if we don’t use iodized salt. Symptoms of iodine deficiency include dry hair, slow metabolism, underactive thyroid, and slowed mental acuity. Iodized salt, by the way, is not used in processed foods. Surprised? Do you really think that the same manufacturers who load their “foods” with hydrogenated oils (transfats), artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup, and hazmat level preservatives are concerned about your health? Please.

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