Preserving without canning

Yangbaechu kimchi

If you read my previous post, you know I don't can. Working with hot food in a sweltering kitchen for an extended period sounds like a nightmare. However, I did some preserving recently of the cold sort when I made yangbaechu kimchi. This turned out to be an easy — and cool — way to use up a glut of cabbage that all matured at the same time.

The national dish of South Korea, and an integral part of most meals there, kimchi is famous far beyond that country’s borders. Even in my small Appalachian town you can find this spicy/sour/tangy side dish for sale in supermarkets. I was introduced to kimchi when I worked at a Korean restaurant in the 1990’s. Rumor had it that the owners, first generation Korean immigrants, had a back yard riddled with holes where kimchi was buried in pots and allowed to ferment. While this method was traditionally used to keep the food at a constant temperature, (and to prevent embarrassing explosions, according to my coworkers) it's not necessary. As I recently learned, a few hours of sitting on the counter, followed by refrigeration, works just fine.

Kimchi has hundreds of variations and can be made with radish, onion, garlic chives, cucumbers, and other vegetables. The type most often encountered in this country is made from napa cabbage, or ‘baechu.’ ‘Yang’ indicates that the recipe I used calls for Western cabbage, meaning green cabbage as pictured above. My spring planting was successful and my harvest surpassed what could use for slaw, so I desperately needed a way to use up a lot of cabbage.

The recipe came from the website Korean Bapsang and can be found here. Since this was my first time making kimchi I was conservative and followed the instructions to the letter. The results exceeded all expectations. Not only was the green cabbage a suitable substitute, the kimchi rivalled that of my former employers. I'll give most of the credit to Hyosun of Korean Bapsang, and her easy to follow directions. Using super fresh homegrown organic cabbage, scallions, and garlic probably helped as well. The fresh ginger, fish sauce, and gochugaru (Korean red chili flakes) cannot be locally sourced unfortunately, but are essential for the authentic kimchi flavors.

The recipe is surprisingly quick and simple. The only time consuming parts are the hour-long salt water soak and waiting for the fermentation process to get started. The actual work was less than an hour. I was amazed by how easy the process was, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to attempt kimchi.

When the mixture was ready I packed it tightly into pint Ball mason jars, and lightly screwed on peanut butter jar lids. In a world in which nothing ever seems to fit right, I find these lids amazing. They fit both the pint and the half pint jelly jar. Parmesan cheese container lids do the same. If you don't have mason jars you can just save the peanut butter jars and use them. You're not actually sealing the jars, so nearly anything will work as long as the lid fits snugly.

I recommend leaving the lids loose and placing the jars in the sink or a basin until you refrigerate them. This will prevent a mess on your work space as the kimchi begins to ferment and expand and liquid is forced out of the jars. The product can be eaten immediately, and will also keep for weeks, if not months, in the fridge.

In an interesting twist of fate, just after I wrote that ginger couldn't be sourced locally, I opened the cupboard to discover the ginger sprouting. I immediately planted it. I had read that store-bought ginger is treated with a chemical that prevents sprouting, so I'd purchased untreated rhizomes and attempted to sprout them without success. Now, here was a sprout from a lowly non-organically grown ginger from the Walmart produce section. The moral of the story: Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Do you use preserving methods that don't involve blistering kitchens and hot water baths? Please share your favorites in the comment section.