Last year The Art of Fermentation was named one of the 25 most influential cookbooks of the past 100 years. Published in 2012, the book was written by Sandor Katz, a former employee of New York City municipal government and member of Act Up, who joined a commune in the hills of Tennessee in the 1990s and started experimenting. As the author of other books such as Wild Fermentation and Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys, Katz has become known as “the godfather of fermentation”. When I interviewed him a few years ago, I was so inspired by his passion for live cultures that I began to experiment with my own.
Fermentation is the process by which certain foods are transformed into other more flavourful foods by microbes such as bacteria or fungi. It’s used to produce wine, beer, cheese and other foodstuffs, but I was most interested in ferments packed with strains of bacteria known as probiotics that, when eaten or drunk raw, are thought to bolster your gut health and immunity. I can’t remember where I came across the “4Ks” plan for introducing these gut-friendly ferments into your diet. But the name appealed, as did the ferments involved: kraut (ie, sauerkraut), kefir, kombucha and kimchi. Now my kitchen is filled with mason jars and crockpots that occasionally need burping.
started with sauerkraut, a fermented cabbage with a German name originally made in China that involves lactic acid bacteria. Some recipes include caraway seeds, juniper berries and other vegetables such as beetroot or onion. But the most basic kraut is made from shredded, salted cabbage that is squeezed and submerged under its own juices. After a month, the cabbage will have turned sour and tangy and can be enjoyed as a side salad or in a grilled Reuben sandwich.
Milk kefir is thought nutritionally superior to yoghurt (which I had made plenty of before) because it contains more probiotics and beneficial yeast. The grains – I got mine from freshlyfermented.co.uk– resemble cream cheese and require “activating” in several changes of milk (I used organic whole milk from Heckfield Home Farm to give them the best start in life). Within a week, I was turning out half-litres of kefir a day. Sour with the consistency of single cream, it transformed protein shakes into creamy, silky smoothies.
Kombucha is a yeast ferment commonly made from black tea and sugar. It requires a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) to get started. “Famous for this jellyfish-like floating blob of cellulose,” writes Sam Cooper in The Fermentation Kitchen, “nothing says ‘crazy alchemist’ more than a jar of kombucha bubbling away in your kitchen.” The SCOBY grows and multiplies into layers. You slice off the baby SCOBYs, which you keep in a SCOBY hotel (sugar syrup) until you want to make more kombucha or gift them to friends. You start referring to SCOBYs like members of family and even give them names.
My method involved making a batch in sugary black tea and adding the additional flavours (such as processed cherries, flat white peaches or pear with ginger) at the bottling stage when natural carbonation introduces fizz. Cooper’s book contains recipes for rose, mint, fig leaf and orange kombucha. Going without alcohol (as I did in January) was less depressing because I had a cocktail cabinet of kombucha home-brews to replace it.
Making kimchi daunted me the most. Not because there are so many varieties of this salted vegetable Korean dish. (I was happy to settle on the most popular version made from Chinese – napa – cabbage known as baechu kimchi.) What put me off were the countless videos I came across on social media of western influencers making kimchi and being critiqued for their poor technique and lacklustre results by Korean mothers and grandmothers. Whether you regard these videos as funny takedowns or the unnecessary gatekeeping of “authentic” dishes that should be open to interpretation by all, those exacting tut-tutting matriarchs gave me pause. What made me think I could do any better? I knew if I wanted to make kimchi that was up to scratch – and I did – I needed help.
Jihyun Kim, known as Kimmy, is the owner of Kimchi & Radish. A South Korean native, she moved to London in 2006 and has been selling her handcrafted, small-batch kimchi since 2018. Her range currently includes traditional (cabbage and daikon), extra hot, beetroot, wild garlic and rainbow kimchi (a white kimchi made without chilli). Working from her commercial kitchen in Camberwell, she walked me through how to make traditional whole-cabbage kimchi.
The process isn’t hard. The cabbage is chopped lengthways, brined for 24 hours and drained. Fresh ginger and garlic are blended into a paste, which is mixed with gochugaru (Korean chilli flake powder) and fish sauce. This is rubbed onto the cabbage, shredded daikon and chopped spring onions, and stored at a low temperature for several weeks.
Some makers add rice porridge. Kimmy doesn’t because she feels it mutes the punchy flavour. Others add fermented salted shrimp. Beyond personal preferences, however, quality kimchi starts with quality ingredients. “When choosing good Chinese cabbage, select the heaviest. It indicates a well-packed, juicy cabbage, which is ideal for kimchi,” she says. She also insists on chilli flake powder from Korea (rather than China or elsewhere) and uses Nongshim Gochugaru Korean Taekyung Chilli Powder.
The biggest challenge for western cooks is knowing what to aim for. When Kimmy started out, she spent a lot of time educating her customers because so many western brands used non-traditional ingredients such as soy sauce and miso. “It’s hard for me to accept these products as kimchi let alone Korean,” she says. To her mind, many are over-fermented too, developing a vinegary taste more akin to pickle than the balance of tanginess, sweetness, spice and textural crispness she considers essential.
For now I’m making baby steps with my own kimchi production. But one day I’m determined I’ll make those grannies proud.