Kimchi

Kimchi. Ahh Kimchi- it's either a complete love or a complete hate. Kimchi is a staple dish here in Korea. Korean's eat kimchi with almost every meal and I really mean almost every one.. It is a taste that you learn to crave. I had never had kimchi before I came here but I was warned about it. Most kimchi is made from cabbage but that is not all. Kimchi is also commonly made with cucumbers, radishs, or turnips. Not to mention all the types of kimchi that I have eaten that I really don't know what vegetable was used in there. My warnings included "it is rotted cabbage (false)"," they bury it for months or years (true)", "it is way to spicy (false-well it is spicy though)". Kimchi is a very spicy food. It should be- the main ingredient is red pepper. There are so many different recipes for kimchi that I will not even go into. Common ingredients are sea salt, onion, garlic, anchovy, and brine. Alot of work goes into the making of kimchi. There is a kimchi making demonstration in Seoul that I have not made it to yet, but I will. Apperantly, it is popular for the women to get together and make kimchi. Here is the kicker with kimchi- the fermentation. Kimchi has to ferment for at least three days, preferablly a month or so, and it is best within 2-3 years. Ok, so they do bury the kimchi for up to three years. THey have special pots that it is buried in. Kind of crazy when you think about it. But is it really? Our ancestors used to hang meat up for long periods of time. That sounds crazy now, but it was the norm back then. Kimchi has been around for over 3,000 years. That is along time for a recipe to stay around. The magazine Health named kimchi in its list of top five "World's Healthiest Foods" for being rich in vitamins, aiding digestion, and even possibly reducing cancer growth. They must be doing something right then! There is a belief here that kimchi prevents Koreans from getting certain diseases including the flu. There are videos on youtube about the Kimchi warrier. I showed my class one on the kimchi warrier fighting off the swine flu. Is it true? Maybe. There haven't been any cases of the swine flu here. It could be just careful prevention, but who is to rule out kimchi?

I found this information on a kimchi website, "One study conducted by Seoul National University claimed that chickens infected with the H5N1 virus, also called avian flu, recovered after eating food containing the same bacteria found in kimchi. However, the veracity of these results has been questioned due to the very small sample size of only a handful of chickens and the fact that no subsequent research supported the claims. During the 2003 SARS outbreak in Asia, many people even believed that kimchi could protect against infection, although there was no scientific evidence to support this belief. However, in May 2009, the Korea Food Research Institute, Korea’s state food research organization, said they had conducted a larger study on 200 chickens, which supported the efficacy of kimchi in fighting off avian flu.

So we don't really know either way. We do know that it is healthy though and therefore I will continue eating it. My first taste has turned into a love of a food that I did not know anything about. Kimchi will probally be the thing I miss most when I head home! The true benefits of Kimchi may remain a mystery to me but the taste sure doesn't!