Recipes

Baek-Kimchi (White Kimchi)

Kimchi with no chile at all — and not a modern mild version invented for children and foreigners, but something much closer to what kimchi was before chiles reached Korea in the 17th or 18th century. Make it once and it tastes like the ancestor: pear, garlic, ginger and jujube in a clear brine, cold and startlingly refreshing.

Fermented · Korean · Vegetable · Side Dish

Baek-Kimchi (White Kimchi)
Prep 45 minutes plus brining
Cook 1–2 days then refrigerate
Serves Makes about 2 quarts
Level Moderate

Kimchi with no chile at all — and not a modern mild version invented for children and foreigners, but something much closer to what kimchi was before chiles reached Korea in the 17th or 18th century. Make it once and it tastes like the ancestor: pear, garlic, ginger and jujube in a clear brine, cold and startlingly refreshing.

Ingredients

  • 1 napa cabbage (about 1.5 kg)
  • 60 g salt for brining
  • 1 Asian pear, half grated and half julienned
  • 6 garlic cloves, slivered
  • 1 inch ginger, slivered
  • 4 jujubes, slivered (optional)
  • 1 Korean radish, julienned
  • 4 scallions, cut in lengths
  • 1 litre water
  • 20 g salt for the brine
  • 1 Tbsp pine nuts (optional)

Directions

  1. Key ingredients
  2. Napa cabbage, Asian pear, aromatics, and a light clear brine instead of a pepper paste.
  3. Brine the cabbage as for Kimchi, Baechu (Napa Cabbage) — 2–4 hours, then rinse and drain well.
  4. Make the stuffing: Grated pear, julienned pear, radish, garlic, ginger, jujube, scallion, pine nuts. No gochugaru, no jeotgal — this version is deliberately clean.
  5. Stuff the mixture between the leaves and fold each quarter into a parcel.
  6. Make the pouring brine: 20 g salt per litre of water, cooled. Pour over until the parcels are submerged. This one is a WET kimchi — the brine is part of the dish and you drink it.
  7. Ferment 1–2 days at room temperature, then refrigerate. Serve cold, with some of the brine.

Notes

PROVENANCE. Mine, built to taste the pre-chile version after the research for the Fermentation section turned up how recent red kimchi actually is.

THE HISTORY IS THE REASON TO MAKE IT. Chiles are a New World crop; they reached Korea by Portuguese and Japanese trade and only became a standard kimchi ingredient centuries after kimchi existed. Baek-kimchi and dongchimi are the surviving older form, not a dilution of the newer one.

RELATED: dongchimi is the radish ‘winter water kimchi’, even more liquid and traditionally drunk as much as eaten; nabak-kimchi sits between the two with a little pepper for color.

The cold brine is the point. In Korea the liquid from a water kimchi is used as a noodle broth — naengmyeon in the summer.

STILL OPEN: I have not tried this with the traditional buried-onggi temperature regime, which is what it was designed around.