How To Make a Traditional Korean Dish

My mother’s family used to make kimchi by themselves every winter. Whenever I visited my grandma’s house for kimchi-making, I would witness the whole family moving busily to get ready. As they were making kimchi for four households and even more for the neighbors, the cabbages were stacked like a mountain, and bowls the length of my arm were needed.

I always sat by my mom to watch her make the kimchi and also “taste-test” the kimchi that she had just made, which is my favorite part of this process. After making all the kimchi, we always had suyuk, boiled pork belly with the kimchi we just made, for dinner.

As this process needed lots of physical effort, due to my grandparent’s failing health as well as Covid-19, they stopped making kimchi since 2020. However, we couldn’t stop eating kimchi just because we stopped making it. So, we started buying kimchi from the markets, which was also good but definitely not as good as our homemade one. After our family came to Beijing, it became even more difficult to find good-tasting kimchi, which eventually brought us back to making our family kimchi by ourselves. It was the revival of kimchi-making!

Since the cabbage kimchi is a bit hard to make, we started with the radish kimchi and the cucumber kimchi. Cucumber kimchi is Korean-style pickled cucumber, which tastes good and is easy to make.

Pro Tips

Starch syrup can be replaced with plum extract.
The kimchi will taste better after being kept in the fridge for at least one day.

Ingredients

6 cucumbers
half onion
one carrot
100g chives
2 tbsp coarse salt
4 tbsp anchovy fish sauce
5 tbsp red pepper powder
1 tbsp starch syrup (or plum extract)
2 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp roasted sesame
2 tbsp cornstarch
a cup of water

Instructions:

1. Wash the cucumbers with the coarse salt.

2. Cut each cucumber into 4 pieces.

3. Then, cut those pieces vertically with an X shape leaving 1-2cm at the end.

4. Put the cut cucumber into a big bowl with water and 2 tbsp of coarse salt. Leave it for one hour.

5. Shred the carrot and onion. Cut the chives to the same size as the carrot.

6. In a pot, add cornstarch and a cup of water. Boil for 3 minutes.

7. In a medium-size bowl, add minced garlic, roasted sesame, red pepper powder, anchovy fish sauce, starch syrup, and the boiled cornstarch for the sauce. Stir it evenly.

8. Mix the sliced carrot, onion, chives, and the sauce you just made together.

9. Pour the water out of the cucumber bowl.

10. Combine the vegetable & sauce mixture with the cucumbers. Mix it evenly. (Make sure the mixture also gets inside the X shape cuts on the cucumbers)