Citrus Kimchee

About a month ago, I was watching a Korean cooking show called Best Cooking Secrets and this kimchee master came on and said, "Today I am going to make citrus kimchee" and I thought, "What! I have to try that!" While I've eaten a lot of different kinds of kimchee, I'd never even heard of one with citrus fruits in it (and I've heard of some weird ingredients, like 7-up). This recipe calls for tangerines, which gives the kimchee a nice tangy sweetness.

For most people, kimchee is just the very spicy fermented cabbage side dish you usually get at Korean restaurants. Even many Koreans don't realize that there are over 180 different kinds of kimchee — there's even a kimchee museum in Seoul dedicated to its glories. Kimchee isn't really one dish, but a term for a kind of fermented food, just like pickles used to be. At one time, you'd never say just "pickles". You'd say "cucumber pickles" or "beet pickles" or "pickled watermelon rinds" or "pickled pig's feet". That's the same with kimchee.

Kimchee, pickles, sauerkraut — it's all one and the same thing, foods that have been preserved in salt. In fact, when Kimchee was first being made (about 8,000 years ago), the only difference between kimchee and sauerkraut was the variety of cabbage or vegetable. It was only later that Koreans started adding spices like garlic and ginger. The red, chili infused versions are late-comers, as chili peppers weren't introduced to Korea until the 16th century. The popular cabbage kimchee you usually see is called mak kimchee. At the better Korean restaurants, you'll also see mul kimchee, which is a white kimchee served in a broth of its own fermented liquid ("mul" means water in Korean). Citrus kimchee is in that category. [For examples of different kimchees, with pics, click here.]


Mul kimchees tend to be one of the easier kinds of kimchees to make since you can make it with chunks of ginger and whole cloves of garlic — with kimchees like mak kimchee, you have to spend quite a lot of time mincing all the garlic, ginger, scallions, etc. Having said that, this particular recipe does require some diligent work in the peeling of all the tangerines. Extra flavor has a price!

Citrus Kimchee

2 cups of Chinese cabbage, washed and cut into small one to two inch squares
1 small Korean radish, cleaned and cut up into small, flat rectangles (about a cup or so)
6 Tangerines, just the pulp*
1/4 cup of Minari (Korean watercress), cut into 4 half-inch pieces
2 cloves of Garlic, sliced into strips
1 teaspoon of Ginger juice — to get ginger juice, grate a hunk of ginger in a Microplaner (the one with the smallest holes)
2 tablespoons of Korean dried chili or 2 sliced red chili pepper
Kosher salt


Put the cut-up cabbage in a big bowl (you want the cabbage to have lots of room and be happy). Sprinkle the cabbage with enough salt to coat the cabbage with a light layer. Shake up the cabbage a little (you want to make sure every bit of the cabbage gets a little salt). Let the cabbage stand for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, clean the radish. First wash and then trim all the hairy parts with a small knife. Cut into small, flat rectangles.

After 30 minutes, the salt will have extracted some liquid from the cabbage. You want to keep that. Add the cut-up radishes along with the minari, garlic, ginger juice, and Korean dried chili. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Add half the tangerine pulp*. Mix again with your hands. Put the mixture into a container, like a pickling jar or even a plastic box — just make sure whatever you are using has a tight lid. Put some water into the bowl that had the cabbage in it — about a cup. Add the other half of the tangerine pulp to the water. Clean your hands in the water. While you're at it, clean the bowl, swishing the water gently around and around. I know this sounds odd, but there's a method to this madness: by cleaning the bowl with your hands, you'll extract every bit of flavor left in the bowl and on your hands. There's also a theory that using your hands while cooking transfers your energy into the food, so it's crucial that you're in a happy mood when you cook. Now add that liquid into the container. Put the container in the refrigerator. In about three days, the kimchee should be ready to eat.


*To get the tangerine pulp, use this technique. Take a sharp, small knife and cut off the top and bottom of a tangerine. Place the tangerine firmly on a cut end. With the knife, cut away the skin and inner membrane, going from top to bottom, easing the knife around the curve of the tangerine. With the membrane gone, it should be easy to remove the pulp, either with a knife or with your fingers.

Here's a picture of a display from the Kimchee Field Museum. All the dishes are examples of ancient kimchee.



credit: Wikimedia Commons