Kimchi, the most favourite subsidiary food of all Koreans, is a distinctive national food which is tasty, of high nutritive value and appetizing.
Kimchi is a processed food made mainly with vegetables and edible grass including fresh bok choy, radish, cucumber, eggplant, parsley and leaf mustard which are flavoured with a mixture of red pepper, spring onion, garlic, ginger, fruit, fish and pickles to go through lactic acid fermentation.
According to a documentary record, Koreans already made kimchi with radish in the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392) and made different kinds of tasty kimchi during the feudal Joson dynasty.
Originally it was called kumchae in the sense that it is as precious as gold. Later it was called kimchi as the sound of the word kumchae gradually changed.
Kimchi stimulates appetite as it is refreshing, cool, savoury, pungent and sweet and sour.
Food should look palatable above all and kimchi is mouth-watering at first sight as it is stuffed or mixed with various spices.
That is why there came into being in the DPRK Song of Bok Choy Kimchi and Cubed Radish Kimchi whose words partly read: Even a sumptuous feast is not tasty without bok choy kimchi and cubed radish kimchi.
Kimchi is also famous as health food for its high nutritive value.
The soft fibre of bok choy and radish, the main materials for kimchi, is a source of vitamin C and pickles and raw fish as auxiliary materials for the food provide protein.
As kimchi matures gradually, protein of the raw fish dissolves into amino acid and so do the bones of the fish to be a source of calcium.
Fully matured kimchi boosts appetite as it contains organic acid and so on.
Korean kimchi with countless kinds which are different in taste is spreading in not only the country’s neighbours but all other countries in the world and it is increasingly popular and in great demand day by day.
The kimchi-making custom was inscribed on the list of national intangible cultural heritage in the country and in 2015 it was put on the UNESCO’s Representative List of ICH of Humanity.
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