Tis the Season for Korean Fermented Vegetables!: or Long Live Fermented Foods!

As it gets colder Korean continue a tradition that predates refrigeration for all cultures. It's time for food preservation and in Korean it's to make a lot of kimchi before the farming ends and winter time begins. That's the time when Korean would have to live on what had grown and preserve that until the next farming season began.

I presume you don't have to be told that kimchi constitutes many types of variety. The most ubiquitous is baechu kimchi or cabbage kimchi.

We had an opportunity to make kimchi with true foodies who owned restaurants and made farms. I had my own personal experiences making Korean food during my  Wwoofing and while in Korea.

We ate a lot of fermented or preserved foods on our trip.

In my studies of traditional foods, I've learned that a certain amount of raw, uncooked food in the diet is indispensable to the highest degree of health and a certain amount of cooked food is necessary for the procurement of enough calories and to unlock the nutritional potential of those foods. One striking observation of ethnic cuisines is that rarely are meals eaten without at least one fermented food or drink. Traditionally they included sausage, cheese, ham, bread, and pickled vegetables in the West. In India, soured milk is often drank. Indonesian's eat tempeh. African's ferment millet for pouridge making. The Chinese ferment duck eggs and tofu. The Korean's eat kimchi. This isn't just a matter of taste but the health benefits derrived from such foods eaten with a variety of other foods.

Happy Bear had the opportunity to make Kimchi in Jeollabukdo and healthy side dishes which will be showed cased in a recipe series of our own recipes inspired from Korean food.

We will showcasing our recipes of these healthy foods.