This is a bowl of 6 months old kimchi kept in an air tight container in my utility room. I made this lot of kimchi early Feb this year and left the kimchi in the air tight container outside the fridge. I wanted to experiment with how long my kimchi could survive(?) in room temperature although kimchi should be kept in fridge temperature for best quality.
A few days ago, I finally decided that I had to do something about my ‘old’ kimchi. Before opening the container, I thought that I might have to throw the whole container of kimchi away because it was not kept in the fridge for nearly 6 months. However, when I opened the container, kimchi was still ‘alive’!! I could see that the top layer of cabbage leaves were a bit faded in colour but underneath those leaves, they were fine. Of course its taste was as sour as vinegar but it was still edible. When kimchi is at this stage of fermentation, you do not expect to have good levels of probiotics but you can still enjoy eating fermented kimchi for other benefits, such as different nutritional properties acquired through the fermentation action. In Korea, when we have very sour kimchi, we tend to cook it in stew. ‘Too-fermented kimchi’ can still be another source of vegetable in your kitchen. I am going to cook my ‘sour’ kimchi with pork as a Korean style stew dish.
TIME FOR KIMCHI 