Excellent post. Illustrative of why I love the SDMB.
To make Frank look foolish, natch.
You forgot to mention the Spam!
Thank god for this thread. I’m about to leave for Minneapolis for 4 days and forgot about my batch of kimchi. I’ll bet it’s perfect now and might have blown up if I forgot about it! My local Dollar store doesn’t carry Spam, but did have a knock-off brand called Prem, made with mechanically separated chicken and pork.
Well, that’s what I meant when I said ham. 
I am so making fried rice with kimchii tonight.
Amazing.
There’s such a thing as knockoff Spam.
The End Is Nigh.
Traditionally, kimchi was buried in clay pots because it ferments best at a steady, cool temperature. In the old times you would make enough kimchi in the fall so that you would have vegetables to eat throughout the winter. You wouldn’t want the kimchi to freeze (Korean winters are very cold) as that would kill the good fermentation bacteria, and you wouldn’t want it to get too warm either (it would get sour too quickly).
As someone else mentioned, the kimchi fridge can do all this now. As you know, a regular home refrigerator waits until the temperature gets up to a certain point before kicking on the cooling mechanism again, but a kimchi fridge is cool (haha) because it keeps contents at a constant temperature… also it helps to keep the kimchi separate so it doesn’t stink up everything else in your regular fridge!
Cheers,
Granny Choe
Granny Choe’s Kimchi Co.
Want kimchi now, the industrial strength stuff that strips chrome off a truck bumper.
You owe us all a jar now, Granny!
Go go Granny Choe. I’ll have to swing by Whole Foods and pick up a jar.
Kimchi is some foul stuff. Tastes like what I would imagine rotten ball sacks taste like with a bad case of jock itch and crabs.
The old refrig on our back porch was the kimchi/beer refrig.
EWW GROSS! Do grow up.
I think it’s one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten: so there!
I imagine a real wine cellar would provide a perfect temperature to age kimchi.
I used to work for a guy who made sauerkraut and he always buried it in clay pots in his backyard, just like kimchi. I can’t speak to how good his kraut was, but the beer he had on hand (usually Grolsch) was excellent.
Bri2k
Really? You should try kim chi fried rice. It’s amazing.
The question is not why they bury them. The question is why they dig them back up.
I’m reminded of this passage from P. J. O’Rourke’s Holidays In Hell:
Can it get any worse? Apparently so. Here, Lassie!
there is summer kimchi which is basically just pickled vegies with garlic and chili. hardly any fermentation there. it’s good 3 days after it’s mixed. the fermented/aged version is the winter kimchi. it’s not so much fermentation but rather aging. burying maintains contant temeperature.
And this is exactly why [in addition to the horrid taste of rotting cabbage and pepper] I will probably never visit Korea, nor again eat in a korean restaurant. The stench of rotting kimchee that my roomie both buys and makes is nasty in a chthulian level way. Even 3-4 days after stopping eating the garbage the stench exudes from her pores. After 2 years of tolerating that crap, I forbade kinchee anywhere on the farm.