Kimchi

Years ago, my wife and I stayed overnight in Seoul on the way home from New Zealand. An amazing array of types of kimchi accompanied breakfast the following morning; and from then on, I was hooked on this Korean staple. For the last few years, I’ve gradually honed my kimchi-making skills. For simplicity, I tend to make mak-kimchi which means “roughly made kimchi.” In traditional kimchi, who cabbages are fermented intact (though usually split in half to permit the salt and later, spices to enter between the leaves.) However, getting the cabbages properly salted it very tricky and often neglected. So instead of making the more traditional kimchi, I’ve specialized in mak-kimchi. The main difference is in the way that the cabbages are handled. In this case, the cabbages are slided into approximately bite-sized pieces then salted, wilted, rinsed, mixed with the spices and allowed to ferment.

Given my obsession with kimchi, I sometimes wonder whether the salt in kimchi promotes hypertension. The good news seems to be that it doesn’t.

In a retrospective recall study^[Consumption of kimchi, a salt fermented vegetable, is not associated with hypertension prevalence, Song, Hong Ji et al., Journal of Ethnic Foods , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , 8 - 12] of over 20,000 Korean adults, there was no association between kimchi consumption and the prevalence of hypertension.