Lovely beside chep chae too. Loves me some kimchee!!! Rarely eat it, my Dearly Beloved is fairly repulsed by my scent and breath for a day or two after indulging.
Mmmmmmmmmm… Korean fooooooood…
I don’t notice the smell nearly as much as my wife appears to, either, but I think the “aroma” also varies some depending on preparation so that some types and brands smell much stronger than others. One brand I used to get my wife found relatively inoffensive, but the one I store I could find it at quit carrying it. The more easily found locally made brand is the one my wife considers a war crime.
Done.
Pleasant recall of a cartoon I once saw – setting, time of the Korean War. A bunch of Western soldiery are taking the mickey out of a passing Korean coolie-type guy, in full rig-out with broad-brimmed straw hat, etc., trudging along carrying a precarious large burden “fore and aft”. A thinks-bubble over the Korean’s head reads: “In a moment, I’ll breathe on them – we’ll see who’s laughing then.”
Re: the bubbles. Kimchi ferments. The traditional kimchi pots are buried and the pressure of dirt and stones keeps the lids on. Fermentation occurs. BUBBLES occur. We love this ! Biting into a mouthful of freshly decanted kimchi and actually feeling the slight bubbling/ fizzling is a blissful feeling.
I learned to cook a few dishes years ago. The kids are both South Korean adoptees, and they were exposed to food from the old country at the summer camp they both attended. Figured if they liked the food, they should get it at home.
Bulgoki is easy, so is kalbé. Chop Chae is also easy and damned tasty. With a few dishes under my belt, I used to make dinners. Also of course, good Korean sticky rice. But kimchi was well beyond me. Once in Philly at Mom and Dad’s house, i opened a large glass jar of kimchi. It’d been fermented in the jar. I was quite ignorant as to what the explosive potential was.
Opened the jar on the dining room table. As the seal raised, deep crimson red juice shot out in a spray in all directions from under the lid.
Mom was less than pleased with the resultant pattern on the carpeting.
:eek::eek:
:smack:
I was once on a shuttle van from the airport (in the back seat), going back to college, with a big bottle of kimchi in my carry on. I got to talking to one of the other passengers and Korea came up, so I took out the bottle to show him. The girl sitting way in the front of the van, next to the driver, turned around and yelled, “WHAT IS THAT SMELL?” Heh.
Fortunately my husband doesn’t mind. A really good kimchi jjigae bek ban is probably my favorite meal in the world.
I eat Korean somewhat regularly and honestly was not aware Kimchi had an offensive smell.
As far as I’ve ever noticed, the only “smell” kimchi has is a vague aroma of chili peppers and vinegar. Not too different than, say, Tabasco sauce.
Try to find an Emart near you. It’s a pretty big Korean grocery chain and we have one only 45 minutes away or so. They sell regular tasting kimchi there, and have a lot of varieties, too.
Really? I love me some kimchi, but that stuff is fairly pungent, especially if you get the old kind (for kimchi jjigae).
In spoken Korean, the sound for the initial letter is sorta kinda somewhere between a “g” and a “k”. To my ear it’s closer to a “k” but a native speaker may disagree…
Anyways, several years back, whoever is in charge of deciding such things decided to change slightly the romanization of the sound. IE: the sign for the airport in Seoul was spelled the same in Korean, but the English sign changed from “Kimpo Airport” to “Gimpo Airport”. Dunno why…
You can make it yourself, you know. There are recipes online, that you can modify as needed to get your preferred degree of heat, garlic, and stink. I’ve made some. It’s just that it takes a few too many weeks to get a batch, and I want it now! dammit!, and the stuff you buy at the not-so-local ‘Asian Grocery’ is made by people who already got the recipe right. Mine was kinda ‘meh’. But I have ideas to try, next time I try to make it myself.
I bet it winds up stinking even more than the stuff my friend’s wife bought.
Yummmmm…
I’m not fond of it myself, but I’ve no objection to anyone else eating it. Just leave me the bulgogi. Mmm, bulgogi.
My understanding is that it had to do with getting rid of apostrophes to indicate aspiration (to make it easier to use the names in URLs and such). So the ㅋ is always k now, and the ㄱ is always g. (Except when it isn’t… no one wants to change the English spelling of the name Kim, for instance.)
Smash up some garlic in your kimchi. Lots of garlic. You’ll get a slightly different result.
As long as you throw a spoonful or two of kimchi on it. Mmmm… bulgogi with kimchi. Mmmm…
Smell my stinky breath… Hhhhh…
There are several different systems of romanization when it comes to Korean; a few years ago the government suddenly decided to use a different one than before, which is why Busan became Pusan, for example.
As for kimchi, my favorite stuff is the really old stuff. Grilled. With samgyupsal. Yum
I don’t care much for cabbage, so I greatly prefer the radish version.
A town near us has a college that owns a Sumatran corpse flower plant - Amorphophallus titanium. When it bloomed a couple of weeks ago I went to see/smell it.
It smelled like kimchi.
What about the home fermented soy sauce (I believe it is buried too)-that stuff smells pretty bad, too.