I like to make a lot of Ramens. I put them in my deep
freezer in a concentrated way so they don’t take up too much space. Then later when I am boiling up noodles to eat with them I put the right amount of
water in the noodles so I can just dump the big block of ice in there with the Ramen base and ingredients. Very convenient. Super tasty. Warms the bones on chilly days.
One of the ingredients for my Ramen is Napa cabbage. Also known as Chinese cabbage when you are in
Asia. I also use leeks.
Over the years I have changed around to various types of
cooking that catch my interest.. Different ethnicities. It’s really fun to know how to cook from all over the world. It’s one of my favorite things. It’s a great hobby of mine to be able to reproduce foods that people’s grandmothers made in their home countries or sometimes a
food that I really like from eating at interesting restaurants.
I just made a chicken biryani pretty recently. It wasn’t that great. Still a lot of
work to do on that. Too much cardamom. Not enough deep flavor whatever that is. My daal is a lot better. I’ll include a picture of
cooking the chicken biryani but that’s not the point of the thread.
The point of the thread is we missed an entire WORLD of
food preservation when we talk about how to keep foods on our boats long-term.
I had some Napa cabbage/Chinese cabbage left over from making my Ramen base. Sometimes I use it in sandwiches in place of lettuce because it lasts longer. But it was getting tired. It was drying out. Do you know what partially dry cabbage is good for?
KIMCHI!!!!!!
We don’t even talk about fermented food preservation on this forum at all. I don’t know why we have missed it. Kimchi is awesome. It tastes great. It’s a wonderful little snack or side dish. I think there’s even a very popular TikTok thing right now that shows how to use kimchi in a grilled cheese sandwich.
I wanted to make it just because I like it. But then I realize i had a whole bunch of Napa cabbage just sitting there starting to dry out. And that’s exactly what you need for kimchi. Typically you put
salt on it to pull
water out of it before you process it into kimchi. Mine was already drying out a bit from sitting in the
refrigerator a while. So it was perfect.
It only took about 15 minutes to make. And it will preserve my Napa cabbage for at least six months. I don’t know how long. But supposedly it last about six months.
For a lighter fermentation taste, you put it in the
refrigerator after a couple days of fermenting out on the counter. In the old days in
Korea they just left it out the whole time. It got pretty ripe. Lol. But I think I like it a little less fermented.
This is a fairly high sodium thing. And I can’t have high sodium. So a good way to get a starter for it and keep the bacteria correct is to use some of that water that appears on the top of yogurt. Do you know that stuff? The whey? That’s full of lactobacillus. And that’s the bacteria you need to use to ferment your kimchi.
Their traditional technique uses lots of
salt. I can’t have that.
Anyway. That’s a long rambling post. But we have completely missed the idea of fermenting our foods to preserve them! I don’t know why. We have talked about dehydrating, canning, freezing, etc. But never fermentation. It’s a perfectly viable way to preserve vegetables. But it also works for
fish and beef. There are kimchi
recipes that include fresh
fish or beef in them. So you can preserve meat and vegetables over the long-haul for months on end. Amazing!
First picture are some of the spices getting ready for the chicken biryani. Second picture and third picture are the kimchi I just made.
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