Kimchi — Day 12 — Tasting


The moment of truth.

After spending this much time around a dish, you can imagine how excited I was to try it. A little frightened, too, since a lot of the work was done by bacteria, and you never know what happens when you leave something outside to "ripen" for days on end.

So I pulled some wooden chopsticks out of a drawer, picked up a crunchy-looking morsel, and put it in my mouth...

...only to basically have to spit it out. This batch is way too salty. The flavors are all delightful — sour, spicy, acidic — but the salt is so intense that it burned my mouth and made the kimchi unpalatable.

So: next time (and there will be a next time):

1) Less salt in the initial salting of the cabbage. Half a cup did seem like a lot, and there was lots of unincorporated salt in the bowl on Day 2. Next time, I'll go with a quarter cup.

2) Less time under the salt: The cabbage wilted within an hour. To the extent that the salting is intended to draw out moisture, it clearly achieved its effect much more rapidly than overnight. What probably happened in the supernumerary 23 hours was that after the moisture came out of the cabbage, a nearly saturated brine migrated back into the leaves. I'm betting I can achieve crunchiness without oversaltiness by salting for only an hour.

3) More rinses. I remember being dimly afraid of over-rinsing, so I did just two changes of water with very little soaking time. Next time I'll do at least three long soak-rinses.

All is not lost with this batch: I'm sure it will make an excellent seasoning for soup. Just as long as I don't use salted broth...

Ah well. Good thing that in addition to being an amateur food scientist, I'm also a biomedical scientist -- I'm used to being patient.

Posted: Thu - April 14, 2005 at 11:20 AM          

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