I am going to show you one of my kimchi recipes. I must say that it is not a very traditional recipe but it works deliciously!

In this recipe, there is an unusual ingredient which is a ‘tomato’. If you add a tomato into kimchi seasoning mixture, it makes kimchi colour rather nice, soft red and even makes kimchi taste ‘cool’. I have to explain this word ‘cool’ to you. In Korea, we have a ‘cool’ taste among many different tastes such as ‘sweet’, ‘spicy hot’, ‘salty’, ‘bitter’, ‘sour’ and ‘COOL’

Can you guess what COOL taste might  be like?

It doesn’t mean that just food temperature is ‘cool’. We often say that “It’s cool.” while having hot broth such as ‘mae-un-tang(Korean spicy fish stew), ‘hong-hap-tang(mussel soup)’, ‘mi-erk-gook'(seaweed soup) or ‘kong-na-mool-gook(bean spout soup)’etc… But when you say, “it’s cool.” in Korean, it can be also for cold temperature food such as ‘dong-chi-mi'(Korean winter mooli water kimchi), ‘cold beer’ etc..

I think that when we say ‘COOL’ for food, it is generally for water/broth based food. I will say that it is not just a kind of tastes you can have in your mouth but also a kind of whole experience of eating/drinking food in our digestion system. I mean from our mouth to stomach!  Ummm, I don’t think that it is easy to explain COOL TASTE literally. You have to TASTE Korean ‘COOL’ food and experience it!

Back to how to make kimchi!!!! 

It’s all done now!

Once you put freshly made kimchi in a container, keep it in room temperature for one or two days depending on weather. (I normally keep it outside the fridge for two days in England. Here it is too cold for kimchi and me….)

it is quite essential for fermenting process of good kimchi.

Enjoy!