My Love for Kimchi as a Korean

If there is bread and butter in the Western world, there is rice and kimchi in the Korean world. Kimchi is something that always has its place on a Korean dining table. Growing up in Korea, I have always loved and eaten kimchi! I can finish a simple meal with just kimchi and a bowl of rice. My dad always says that Kimchi has all kinds of vegetables in the dish, thus all kinds of nutrition, that you need in a meal. Therefore kimchi is all you need in a meal.

With that much love and care for Kimchi, it made me quite sad not to be able to eat kimchi after moving abroad. For one, it takes a lot of preparation. And secondly, there are many ingredients that I couldn’t find. Most importantly, the smell of pungent, strong, and unique smell of kimchi was something that I didn’t want to have at my home or myself. But after almost a decade of living away from my home country Korea, I finally learned all the tricks to make Kimchi – and not just Kimchi, a delicious and nutritious Kimchi! Shall we go over some health benefits of Kimchi? It’s not only delicious, but it has so many health benefits that it makes me crave kimchi even more!

Health Benefits of Kimchi

1. Nutrient-Rich

Kimchi is a blend of so many vegetables, seaweed, and often fruits, that it is extremely rich in vitamins, minerals (like calcium and iron), and dietary fiber. What’s so unique about kimchi is that it is also rich in Vitamin C. So in the old days in Korea, people were still able to consume vitamin C that usually present in fresh produce which is hard to get in the winter.

2. Loads of Antioxidants

I just complained about the smell that comes from garlic and onions, but these ingredients together with ginger and red pepper are also packed with antioxidants, which help protect against oxidative stress and inflammation. Simply put, it keeps you young!

3. Gut health

Once kimchi starts to ferment, the probiotics naturally start to form in kimchi which promotes a healthy balance of gut bacteria, helping in digestion and potentially boosting the immune system.

4. Weight management

Some studies suggest that kimchi may aid in weight loss and reduce the risk of obesity due to its ability to regulate appetite and metabolism.

Kimjang: Making and Sharing Kimchi in Korea

I just want to introduce you to one Korean word that shows the history of Kimchi, and how it is such a big part of Korean culture. It is “Kimjang.” Kimjang is a term that refers to the act of making a large amount of kimchi to be eaten during the winter in late fall or early winter, or to kimchi made in that way. As Koreans eat a lot of Kimchi it is a type of food that always has a place on the Korean table, a family takes time to make lots of kimchi together for a whole year. In the old days, everyone in a village would gather together to make kimchi.

I remember my childhood when my parents took several days to prepare and kimchi. Nowadays, many households buy kimchi from stores. But my parents, especially my mom, would buy fresh ingredients from each market and make it from scratch. (It certainly helped me to try making kimchi on my own even when I lived abroad alone!) First, they would wash the napa cabbage and salt it thoroughly all over the cabbage. Making the kimchi sauce would take another day or two. After they were done with kimjang, we would have a kimchi festival! We would eat lots of freshly made kimchi for every meal. Now let’s talk about the ingredients of kimchi and how I created my vegan kimchi recipe.

Key Kimchi Ingredients

Traditional vs Vegan Kimchi

The heart of kimchi is cabbage, usually Napa Cabbage or Korean cabbage varieties. It could also be made from various other vegetables like radishes, cucumbers, green onions, and more. The key to kimchi’s distinctive flavor lies in the seasonings, which typically include garlic, ginger, Korean red pepper flakes (gochugaru), salt, and sometimes fruits. These ingredients together create the perfect blend of spicy, salty, sour, and umami flavors that we love. But the problem is that the raw aromatics have a pungent smell in kimchi. It gets even stronger when it ferments. It gets even stronger if you put fish sauce in it, which is a traditional way to make kimchi.

My Vegan Kimchi Recipe Tips

My vegan kimchi recipe is not only vegan but also has other things in mind, making it unique, such as adding more nutrition (if you know me, I always try to sneak in more ingredients to boost nutrition!) I also tried to make it smell less. I like my kimchi but I don’t want to have raw onions and garlic smell stained in my fridge. Lastly, I experimented with some sweetener choices that go into kimchi.

1. Cook Aromatics

Now kimchi has spread around the world and many of my friends all over the world love and even make kimchi themselves at home. So I don’t have to be as conscious about using so much garlic and onions, but I am still very careful about the smell of kimchi. When you make kimchi at home, it fills up the whole place with raw onions and garlic. And of course, your mouth will smell once you eat! I’ve found a way to avoid the smell while still enjoying my kimchi.

2. Other Additional Spices

There are more unusual ingredients that I put in my kimchi recipe, but I just wanted to go over these spices as I believe they are one of the most important ingredients: turmeric and pepper. Turmeric is one of the most powerful superfood ingredients in the world, so I always put it in my kimchi. I also put a little bit of ground pepper for better absorption of turmeric – a polyphenol called curcumin in turmeric increases bioavailability by 2000 times when combined with pepper! So I always add turmeric and pepper to my kimchi to boost the nutrition while not changing the flavor of kimchi – if anything, it makes it slightly spicier and deeper in flavor.

3. Fruits for Sweeteners

In Korea, many people use plum extract or Korean pear to add sweetness to their Kimchi. Plum extract adds a beautiful tart, sour, and sweet flavor to Kimchi or any kind of dish. Korean pear is sweet and has a crunchy texture which adds really nice texture to the Kimchi. But both of them are often quite hard to get, especially in Norway where I live. So I had to experiment with many different types of sweeteners that were available where I live, and they might be more available where you live too.

4. Oats for Paste

I see many kimchi recipes from non-Korean people, and they usually don’t have glutinous rice flour. In a traditional Korean kimchi recipe, there is glutinous rice flour in kimchi sauce and there is a reason for it. First of all, it makes the sauce more like a paste consistency. That consistency not only makes it easier to put sauce on the salted cabbage, it also gives more depth to flavor. Moreover, it absorbs water from the cabbage. If you don’t put rice flour, your kimchi will have too much water in the sauce.

Instead of glutinous rice flour though, I substituted it with oat flour. And it works so beautifully. It has more nutrients while serving the same purpose of adding glutinous rice flour into the recipe. It’s amazing!

5. Replace Fish Sauce with Soy Sauce

Traditional kimchi has fish sauce and other seafood like shrimp paste included in the ingredients. I don’t like the taste of it, but it also gives off very strong smell as it ferments. I learned this from my friend who studied Korean Cuisine as her masters, and apparently it tastes amazing to put soy suace in your kimchi. So I replaced the fish sauce with soy suace and it works great.

Vegan Kimchi Recipe | Nutritious & Delicious Tips from a Korean

Vegan Kimchi Recipe

Make this vegan kimchi that is so tasty and

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Ingredients

  

Vegetables

• 5.5 pounds Napa cabbage 1 big head or 2 medium heads
• 7 oz Onions Julienned and lightly cooked
• 7 oz Green onions Julienned and lightly cooked
• 7 oz Purple cabbage Julienned
• 7 oz Salt
• 3.5 oz Carrots Julienned

Ingredients for sauce

• 1/2 cup Water
• 1/3 cup Oats
• 1.7 oz Garlic
• 0.7 oz Beet
• 1.7 oz Date paste
• 0.2 oz Dried wakame
• 0.5 oz Dried shiitake mushroom
• 1 tsp Turmeric Powder
• 1/4 tsp Black Pepper Ground

Raw Ingredients for sauce

• 7.7 oz Gochugaru Korean red pepper flakes
• 3.5 oz Soy sauce
• 0.7 oz Ginger
• 1.7 oz Apples Optional
• 1.7 oz Pears Optional

Instructions

 

How to Prepare Kimchi Vegetables

• Cut the napa cabbage in half and trim off the bottom of the cabbage. Slice the rest of the leaves thinly into finger size.
• Julienne onions and green onions and lightly cook them with a little bit of water in a pan. You want the raw smell of the aromatics but still want to have the vegetables crunchy.
• Julienne carrots and purple cabbage.
• In a big pot, throw in all the vegetables. Sprinkle the salt and mix them well. After a few hours, the vegetables should be withered, and have taken water out of them.

How to Make Kimchi Sauce

• In a pot, pour water, oats, garlic, beet, date paste, dried wakame, dried shiitake, turmeric, and black pepper.
• Bring it to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. Leave it to rest and cool it down for 30 minutes.
• Blend everything in a blender with fresh ginger. You can add the optional apple and pear in the blender now.
• Mix Gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes) and soy sauce with the rest of the sauce.

Tips to Kimchi

• If you want to have fermented kimchi, you would need to leave kimchi at the cool room temperature in the shaded place and wait for a week. But if you want to have fermented kimchi at hand, you can take a spoonful of vinegar and mix it with a plate of your fresh kimchi. Add more vinegar to your liking.

Closing words to My Vegan Kimchi Recipe

Once you have the kimchi vegetables and sauce ready, mix all of them together. You can serve it right away to enjoy the fresh kimchi or leave it at room temperature for a few days to have fermented kimchi. There are some ingredients here that are not traditionally used, such as dates, oats, purple cabbage, beets, and turmeric. But I find them go so well with the traditional kimchi taste and make my kimchi even more healthy, so these are the ones that I always put in mind now. In fact, you could put any fruits with a subtle taste and smell to sweeten and add additional nutrients to your kimchi – oranges, pineapples, perhaps. I hope you get to fall in love with this nutritional vegan kimchi eat lots of it and enjoy all the health benefits!

If you liked this post, check out my other recipes that I shared on my blog. There are many Korean or Korean-inspired recipes that are vegan.

Korean Rice Cake Soup, Tteokguk | Vegan Tteokguk Recipe

Spicy Korean Cucumber Salad Recipe | Oi-muchim