Do Koreans eat Kimchi everyday?
Yes, we do! We eat them for every meal! Kimchi is the most important side dish for a meal. The most famous Kimchi is cabbage Kimchi(배추김치), but there are lots of different Kimchis such as radish Kimchi(깍두기), water Kimchi(물김치), cucumber Kimchi(오이김치), mustard leaves Kimchi(갓김치). There are over 200 kinds of Kimchi in Korea.
Sometimes, I just eat several kinds of Kimchi and rice without other side dishes for my meals.
We normally make Kimchi in the winter, because cabbages are good in the winter. We say this “김장하다(to make Kimchi)” or “김치를 담그다(to make Kimchi)”. If there are 4 people in a family, they will buy about 40 cabbages when they make Kimchi.
It is not an easy process! We cut cabbages in a half or in a quarter and put them into a salt water for 6 hours. Then, take them out and drain them. While the cabbages are drained, we make 김치 속(Kimchi seasoning) with radish, anchovy sauce, red pepper powder, garlic, ginger, green onion and a little bit of sugar. And then put the seasoning into the cabbage for every leaf.
Most Korean families recently have a Kimchi refrigerator(김치 냉장고) which keeps the certain temperature and contains a lot of Kimchi. Yes, we have two refrigerators. Because Kimchi is fermenting, it STINKS!!!!! So you don’t want to open your refrigerator too often if there is a jar of Kimchi in your refrigerator. 🙂
I usually make Kimchi fried rice(김치볶음밥). It is very easy! You can make it too!
1. Cut Kimchi in small pieces and fry 5 mins with a little bit of oil.
2. If you want, you can put onions or mushrooms and fry them with Kimchi.
3. Fry an egg on an another pan. ( I usually scramble my egg and mix with fried Kimchi because I don’t want to do dishes!!)
4. Put a bowl of rice and pour some Kimchi juice or Gochu-jang(red pepper sauce).
5. Fry them until they gets crispy!!!
Are you ready?
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