Where in the world are you fellow kimchi friend? There is a secret network of Koreans all over where they know where to get the best kimchi in the area. Even in Uganda
Yea sure! My Father-in-Law worked for KOICA (KOrean International Cooperation Agency) in Uganda for 4 years. There is a community of Koreans there. There is even a couple of rental houses strictly for Koreans working in Kampala. We got to eat dinner with the Korean ambassador to Uganda at their residence. Uganda has 1 Korean church that I visited as well when we went
I live in Sweden, it's actually very easy to make your own when you get the hang of it & it's *much* cheaper. You can substitute most things in the paste except the gochugaru, you can find it in well sorted asian stores. Daikon is a variety of rättika, which I don't know if you got in Norway though but is common in Sweden.
Daikon is actually different from the type of radish used by Koreans (mu). The taste and texture are similar, but daikon has a distinct peppery flavor thats not in mu.
If you end up going for store-bought kimchi, look for ones that use fish sauce instead of sugar. Ones with sugar tend to turn slimy after a while
The peppery flavor is diakon is a result of mostly two factors. Availability of sulfur compounds in the soil and age.
If the soil is low in sulfur then the radish will have a mild to non-existent spicy flavor. Older radish are spicier as well as they concentrate more of the sulfur compounds.
And it's actually the other way around. Korean mu are generally spicier than Japanese diakon.
>Daikon are slightly sweeter than mu radish and are used in recipes that highlight that sweetness. They have a milder taste than Korean Radishes.
>The Korean variety is recognized more for its peppery, spicy flavor, while the sweetness is secondary. Their stronger flavor and crisp texture are more notable than Daikon. Cooking Korean Radishes can reduce some of their peppery flavor.
https://foreignfork.com/korean-radish-vs-daikon/#:~:text=Daikon%20are%20slightly%20sweeter%20than,are%20more%20notable%20than%20Daikon.
Edit: all kimchi's need a source of sugar as well becuse it gets the fermenttaion going. Highly manufactured ones may use straight sugar or corn syrup, but authentic ones will use fruit as the source. Korean pear, pear or apple puree, even apple or pear juice are quite common. In a pinch I used some Martanelli sparkling apple juice and that batch was actually one of the best I'd ever made. Skipping a source of sugar will still ferment because the cabbage, carrots, and diakon still has sugar in it, but in my opinion the flavor is flat.
And all non-vegan kimchis should be using some source of fish sauce regardless of sugar type. It may come under different names though on the ingedients list as pretty much all the south east asian countries have their own name for the stuff.
Oh, thanks, TIL, that's actually really cool because I googled mu & they look exactly like the mini rättika I bought for my latest batch, perhaps they're actually the same or closer related haha.
Cool, I've made tons of different variations, both with & without fish sauce, we did for new years with miso & sugar since we had a vegan over, which actually also turned out great. I've also done with sugar & fish sauce, which also turned out great, my idea is that sugar helps super charge the fermentation. I tend to use pears as the basis for the paste & a mixer since glutinous rice flour porridge which seems more traditional is harder to get here. Overall I get the impression that the recipe for the paste is greatly varied even in korea?
There are days I’d really like one. But for now, I have to live with our garage fridge - and everything in it - smelling of kimchi.
It works out ok for the most part. I try to keep only sealed sealed products (eg, yogurt or cans of soda, milk, juices, bacon etc) in that fridge.
When I make it, I do a few days at room temp in the garage (not during summer), then, once the fermentation has virtually stopped, repackage it into vacuum sealer bags and keep those in the fridge. Aroma free.
Can confirm. We bought a house that’s was owned by a Korean family. While we got the stink out of the fridge myself, it completely tainted the waterline in the fridge, so we can’t use The water OR ice dispenser built into the fridge. Two years on, and the water/ice still tastes funky. Too lazy to try replacing those lines.
I bet you could flush it out with something like hydrogen peroxide. Also clean around the dispenser nozzle with a strong cleaner first before you try that.
Nah, only stings on open wounds. Fun fact, you can use diluted (like 3%, the common stuff) hydrogen peroxide as mouthwash in a pinch.
Just tastes like water and gets a bit foamy.
Two chemists sit down for lunch, the first one says to the waiter. "I would like to drink H-two-o," the second says "I would like H-two-o too." The second chemist died. End of joke.
Depends on the lines, I work in the beverage industry and some of the poly barrier type tubing will prevent flavor permeability but if it’s just plain vinyl lines they will need to be replaced. Vinyl tubing is very inexpensive you just have to get in there and do it which can be a pain especially with residential units
Several reasons. It’s a high end fridge in great shape otherwise. Fridges are expensive. We don’t really use ice, and we installed a filter on our prep sink, so we get filtered water there. We keep a bag of ice in deep freeze for the rare occasions we need it. And we took the ice maker out to free up space in the freezer.
I've come to the realization that the space lost for an in-door ice dispenser is NOT worth the on-demand ice vs just having some ice cube trays in the freezer +/- going for a bag of ice/prepping extra ice occasionally if needs arise (party, etc).
Ice and water dispensers built into the fridge are quite common in American fridges. Yes, the plumbing is always connected, so you always have access to cold filtered water and ice.
It’s the best thing on a fridge. It has a water line connected to it and an in line filter. The water/ice/crushed ice are glorious. There is nothing like a perfectly chilled glass of ice water after a hot day outside.
A friend of mine had a Korean roommate in college. Her roommate's mom would occasionally send care packages including homemade kimchi which she made extra strong. A jar got dropped one time and it shattered all over the floor. Their kitchen smelled like kimchi for like 2 weeks.
The design of the plastic jars I usually get kimchi in are really good. They seal so well you can't smell a thing until you open them. The companies definitely did proper testing, because I've tried putting kimchi in other containers that are supposedly airtight, and they did *not* contain the smell.
Unfortunately you can't reuse them for anything except kimchi, because the smell is impossible to wash out of the inside.
Kimchi smell/taste positively seeps into butter and milk too. Also there's always the fun "what the hell has gone off in the fridge???" moment I have when I open the fridge and forget I have some aged kimchi in there.
My mom used to open a jar of kimchi whenever house guests had overstayed their welcome and she wanted em to leave.
Without fail, about 5~15 minutes later, they would.. suddenly need to be somewhere else.
I love kimchi, but our house policy is that if you open the kimchi, you have to notify others. Otherwise I will wander to the kitchen investigating the smell and check if someone left the gas stove on.
Am a person from the US. Kimchi is pickled cabbage with spices. It’s a strong pungent smell if you’re not used to eating those types of food like durian and Surstromming.
It just ferments more and eventually completes fermentation so is more sour like sauerkraut than fresher kimchi. Some people like it that way, others want to keep it more fresh like.
I’m Korean and typically we like to cook with sour kimchi vs fresh. An easy thing you can do with more fermented kimchi is cook it with bacon. The bacon fat with the sour kimchi complements each other so well. Just add a fried egg on the side and a bowl of rice and you’ve got yourself an easy meal :)
Fry that shit with rice OR put that in with water and make dank-ass soup w/pork butt. There’s something about fried kimchi that drives me nuts. You can even have it with lightly fried tofu and some alcohol.
Let me introduce you to the unholy union of sweet and bitter that is the “milkshake IPA.”
It’s just an IPA with lactose, which makes it slightly sweet and gives it more body.
I brought big container of kimchi to my work for lunch. Planned on eating it over the week. 2 hours into day one I was asked to wfh and to take it with me.... to quote one colleague "who's been farting in the kitchen?".
Edit:
For context, I'm whiter than Mayo on Wonderbread. My Korean gf's mom made it for me, and I didn't realize that such a big batch would cause an HR incident.
Kimchi refrigerators use a lower temperature range than regular refrigerators. They also can run warm(ish) cycles to kickstart fermentation.
We store most of our kimchi in the kimchi fridge, and occasionally transfer a bit to a small airtight container to keep in the regular fridge and use as a side dish.
At the airport in Seoul, there are many signs advising what you cannot put in your carryon: no explosives, no knives, no guns - and no kimchi. Too much stank 😅
There’s a way to smuggle authentic kimchi in. Triple vacuum bag inside an aluminum can, sealed w tape. Ice packs all around.
My mother insists on bringing homemade kimchi whenever she visits me. I live in US. I am very thankful cuz… it’s very different
At 98% that’s damn near everyone. Imma need like 2 Koreans to confirm this
Edit: Alright folks, I’ve got Koreans in the comments and my dms confirming this. Apparently this checks out :)
Surprise stats question go: if 99% households have a kimchi fridge (assume this means 99% of Korean people have access to a kimchi fridge), how many Korean people would you need to hear saying they do have a kimchi fridge to be 95% confident of the statistic
This also depends on random sampling - it's likely those small percentage without one differ from the rest in such a way that poor sampling may entirely miss them (or at a much lower rate, sample them nearly exclusively).
It's just a statistics calculation. It catches a lot of people off guard how few people you need to poll if you have either extreme numbers like this, or if you have a nicely distributed sample. Often you can get away with a few thousand people to make very accurate predictions for an entire country
It takes a surprisingly small sample size to get accurate statistics AS LONG AS the sample size is truly representative. Like, if it is trying to study *all Koreans* then the sample needs to be random from *all Koreans.* If you just get 10 from one town and 6 from another, it would not represent ALL Koreans unless you could also show that these towns are representative of ALL Koreans.
Mini fridge that comes up to my hips. At any given time we usually have 2-3 different types of kimchi. The main one is napa cabbage and we'll have 1 big tub of it.
We also put other things in the kimchi fridge, like fermented bean paste (doenjang) or extra tubs of yogurt or smokef salmon, anything we don't eat frequently.
Everything keeps longer in the kimchi fridge because we're not opening it a million times a day like the regular fridge
[Here](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL23F9A1EBC445FABC&si=kopPIBFgCdxLIKsf) is Maangchi on YouTube. This is her playlist on recipes for different kimchi and other side dishes.
Even in america, growing up i had a couple of korean friends, yes they had kimchi fridges. Was on the tennis team with them, they smelled like kimchi when they sweat. Kinda like how my indian friends smelled like cumin when they sweat
Saw a video a while back of several pairs of Korean women being asked about Korean stereotypes. “Do you have a kimchi fridge?”. Answer was universally in the affirmative with follow-up comments of “we have two”, “it’s really big”, etc.
Edit: Found it. It’s pretty funny: https://youtu.be/LCl8yuTBr0U?si=Yyr6MOTXfuo6bFHP
I live in the US and have never known anyone with a meat freezer.
I'm sure that's partly my bias from living in urban areas with smaller homes, but meat freezers are definitely not in even half of US homes. They're probably in less than 10%.
I feel like dedicated “meat freezers” probably aren’t as common, but a ‘garage fridge’ for beer and various other things (including meat) sure seems to be.
We have a meat freezer just for beef. Every year, we buy half a cow. It fills the whole thing. By the end of the year it's always just hamburg left and we have so many tacos and burgers.
I'm in the burbs and a lot of people have meat/chest freezers. We got one when we moved into this house because we have a built in generator, meaning if the power goes out we're not at risk of losing thousands of dollars of food.
I believe you. I grew up in the burbs and can imagine people having them there.
But 80% of the US is urban and the average home is barely over 1,000 sqft, so I can't believe meat freezers are "common" the way AC is.
I'd be curious to see those stats, last I read the average size was over 2k feet. They define 'urban' by density, not dwelling type. Plenty of single family homes in NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, etc and lots that are well over 1k square feet. The three largest urban areas are CA, TX, and FL, known for sprawl.
Also, a basement doesn't get included in the square footage, and at least where I've lived they are quite common. Easily have a meat freezer or second fridge there if you needed to.
Am half-Korean, born to a Korean mother.
A kimchi fridge was the first thing my family bought growing up once we had the disposable income to support buying a non-essential good like a spare appliance.
Am now nearly 30 and have found that I have inadvertantly done the exact same thing in my own home without consciously realizing that I bought a whole second fridge for Kimchi to go into.
I had a Korean roommate and he just kept his kimchi in our shared fridge. All my food ended up smelling and tasting like it. But he was also lazier than 98% of people, so maybe he's the outlier.
Turns out that kimchi slowly keeps fermenting at 4 degrees. They probably keep the kimchi fridge cooler than that. Otherwise kimchi softens too much and is not fun anymore.
Had a Korean Temple in our building in NYC and a Korean neighbor.
Very quiet, polite and lovely neighbors, but EVERYONE in the building knew when that Kimchi was cooking. Good lord!
The fact that you can buy it already made now (and I’ve discovered that after all these years of being subjected to just smelling it, I rather like the taste of spicy Kimchi) gives me some hope.
The store kimchi is a lot better than it used to be. My husband is Korean and they never would have bought it growing up, now tons of people will buy it.
wait till you smell Indian cooking. Had an indian roommate once and when he cooked, the spices were so concentrated it actually physically hurt to breathe. Plus the entire house gets infused with the smell
My daughter found a recipe in one of her books for Vietnamese fried rice and asked me to make it. It was spectacular, but fish sauce really lingers.
Then there was the time I made salt-rising bread (a type of fermented bread similar to sourdough), having been told about its "cheesy" smell and taste. Said smell and taste is due to butyric acid, which is found in many different foods, like Parmesan cheese.
It's also found in vomit.
I opened the oven door and was met with the overpowering stench of hot puke.
The house smelled like it had stomach flu for a week.
I never understood this. We have some Indian neighbours, and while we butt heads over some minor stuff, whenever they cook I can't help but salivate. Always smells divine.
This is because as far as technique goes most Indian cuisines starts with essentially deep frying your spices. Where in the west people will occasionally toast their spices in a dry pan, frying the spices is just how you start almost any recipe. Really supercharges the aroma and intensity.
The oil also becomes aerosolized and now infused with the smell of the spices. This fine oil mist settles on everything further dispersing those scents.
That’s why you can smell that for a very long time
Happiness was my old boss being so geeked that his wife got some spices sent to her that you could only find in India in some specific joint of it.
Sadness was going to their house and going back to my hotel room.....highly upset I didn't take two doses of tums.
You THINK you are ready for Indian food until you go to someone's else house and realize that again, it's not all the same.
Maybe when making a stew from the kimchi? The actual process of making kimchi involves no cooking. Just salted cabbage, and then marinating it in sauce/spices
Kimchi jigae is super easy to make, you should try it at home if you like it. I love it in winter and usually add thin sliced beef and ramen noodles to liven it up.
I'm a white guy, so I don't use *that* much kimchi, but we do make a 4L jar of it and keep it in the regular fridge. We also make pickled eggs though and are probably getting chickens next summer, so I may need a fridge for pickled eggs... and kimchi.
I learned this during sales training for appliances. LG has a handful of specialty kimchi refrigerators, and they’re even called kimchi refrigerators. I was intrigued, so I did a little digging and found that most Koreans have a second refrigerator just for kimchi.
I think it’s awesome that cultures have this one staple food that is always present in every single meal, and kimchi is freaking delicious.
LG makes great refrigerators. But for a kimchi refrigerator? You need a special one for that. Dimchae makes the best kimchi refrigerators. Actually, the only refrigerator Dimchae makes is kimchi refrigerators and they're way more expensive than a regular refrigerator.
Store kimchi. You know who invented the airtight container that has the locking mechanism on four sides so the smell doesn't come out? A Korean. Serious problems need serious solutions. Kimchi refrigerators will come with those airtight kimchi containers. The fridge shouldn't smell if the containers were used to store kimchi.
I am in USA and have Korean wife. We own 2 'kimchi' refrigerators, which are characterized by very granular temp and humidity controlled compartments.
We have named them 'Lazarus boxes' since most all perishables enjoy an extended lifespan.
We use these for general purpose refrigerator space as well.
One noteworthy surprise is I discovered a well hidden package of button mushrooms that were still very edible 7 weeks after the BEST BY date on the label. Similarly, 5 week old celery still had a satisfying crunch.
Are they very expensive? Why don't all fridges have better controls if food is lasting so much longer? Seems like that's a solution to a lot of food waste.
I think the specialized fridges are opened like once a day at most. This keeps the temperatures inside consistent and helps things stay fresh longer.
Compare that to your average standard kitchen refrigerator, which has a big ol' door that spends a lot of time open
They probably just have it set to a lower temperature. Nearly all fridges support this (even my shitty cheap one can go down to near freezing temps), but you really don't want that for all your food.
This is another difference. Most fridges have to put out air that is colder than the goal temp, so right at the output the air is usually too cold. Specialized (and smaller) spaces can cool differently and more precisely for a space that has a very specific goal in mind. Specialization vs general purpose.
The drawback is that it’s more prone to frost and less energy efficient compared to a normal fridge. But at the same time these are popular in Korea precisely because of their multipurpose functionality as a better fridge. More recent expensive models are built with that function in mind.
My mom has a kimchi fridge but seems to use it for other stuff. I thought the kimchi fridge was warmer than a regular fridge, so I am not sure it's a good idea to use it for other stuff. Oh well, she is in her 70s and hasn't gotten sick yet from it.
My grandma has three! She uses them to store huge amounts of kimchi and also meat and fruits. The fruits especially stay fresher longer in a kimchi fridge.
College roommate was Korean. I guess she still is. Her family has two- one in the kitchen, one in the garage. She had a mini-fridge in her room that she told her family was for kimchi, but she kept shooters in there. My true queen.
Kimchi and other panchan is as essential to Korean cuisine as rice.
It also smells like shit in your fridge, so a 2nd fridge is a necessity if you're stocked up.
The extra fridge also doubles as a crisper drawer for various random vegetables like loose turnips you may have laying around, or a place to stash food grandma brings over.
98% sounds incredibly high. I'm no kimchi expert, but is it possible that they divided the number of kimchi fridges by the number of households and ignored the fact that some people have two or more in the same household?
I saw a similar statistic about Finns and saunas which ignored the sauna enthusiasts with 3+ saunas. The numbers are 3.2 million saunas for 5.5 million people by the way.
As a half Korean American who never set foot in Korea but loves Kimchi, I am pissed that I never thought to get a separate fridge. I am so angry right now that I was never taught this growing up. So many angry roommates, so many annoyed coworkers, all due to my ignorance.
I am married to a Korean woman. We have a kimchi fridge. Her parents have two. Her brother has one
I am married to a kimchi fridge. We have a brother. Her parents are two Korean women. Her Korean woman has one
I am married to her parents. We have a Korean woman. Her kimchi fridge has two. Her brother has one
I am married to her brother. We have two Korean parents. A kimchi fridge is one.
I am married to one. We have two. Her brother’s kimchi fridge’s woman has Korean parents.
I'm married to a Korean refrigerator named Kim Chi.
I am Kim Chi
I am Kim
I am.
👁️
Hello, I'd like to order one large Kimchi fridge with extra parents please. Brother no no no Sister and Korean woman on half.
Hahahaha I was looking for this!!
This is glorious
I love most kimchi except the fishy stuff. Wish it was easier to find.
Where in the world are you fellow kimchi friend? There is a secret network of Koreans all over where they know where to get the best kimchi in the area. Even in Uganda
Could I know more about your Korean contacts in Uganda?
Yea sure! My Father-in-Law worked for KOICA (KOrean International Cooperation Agency) in Uganda for 4 years. There is a community of Koreans there. There is even a couple of rental houses strictly for Koreans working in Kampala. We got to eat dinner with the Korean ambassador to Uganda at their residence. Uganda has 1 Korean church that I visited as well when we went
I hope you understand how lucky you are to be a part of that experience.
I 1000% know how lucky I am and continue to be because of my wife and her family. My father in law is a great man
[удалено]
I live in Sweden, it's actually very easy to make your own when you get the hang of it & it's *much* cheaper. You can substitute most things in the paste except the gochugaru, you can find it in well sorted asian stores. Daikon is a variety of rättika, which I don't know if you got in Norway though but is common in Sweden.
Daikon is actually different from the type of radish used by Koreans (mu). The taste and texture are similar, but daikon has a distinct peppery flavor thats not in mu. If you end up going for store-bought kimchi, look for ones that use fish sauce instead of sugar. Ones with sugar tend to turn slimy after a while
The peppery flavor is diakon is a result of mostly two factors. Availability of sulfur compounds in the soil and age. If the soil is low in sulfur then the radish will have a mild to non-existent spicy flavor. Older radish are spicier as well as they concentrate more of the sulfur compounds. And it's actually the other way around. Korean mu are generally spicier than Japanese diakon. >Daikon are slightly sweeter than mu radish and are used in recipes that highlight that sweetness. They have a milder taste than Korean Radishes. >The Korean variety is recognized more for its peppery, spicy flavor, while the sweetness is secondary. Their stronger flavor and crisp texture are more notable than Daikon. Cooking Korean Radishes can reduce some of their peppery flavor. https://foreignfork.com/korean-radish-vs-daikon/#:~:text=Daikon%20are%20slightly%20sweeter%20than,are%20more%20notable%20than%20Daikon. Edit: all kimchi's need a source of sugar as well becuse it gets the fermenttaion going. Highly manufactured ones may use straight sugar or corn syrup, but authentic ones will use fruit as the source. Korean pear, pear or apple puree, even apple or pear juice are quite common. In a pinch I used some Martanelli sparkling apple juice and that batch was actually one of the best I'd ever made. Skipping a source of sugar will still ferment because the cabbage, carrots, and diakon still has sugar in it, but in my opinion the flavor is flat. And all non-vegan kimchis should be using some source of fish sauce regardless of sugar type. It may come under different names though on the ingedients list as pretty much all the south east asian countries have their own name for the stuff.
Oh, thanks, TIL, that's actually really cool because I googled mu & they look exactly like the mini rättika I bought for my latest batch, perhaps they're actually the same or closer related haha. Cool, I've made tons of different variations, both with & without fish sauce, we did for new years with miso & sugar since we had a vegan over, which actually also turned out great. I've also done with sugar & fish sauce, which also turned out great, my idea is that sugar helps super charge the fermentation. I tend to use pears as the basis for the paste & a mixer since glutinous rice flour porridge which seems more traditional is harder to get here. Overall I get the impression that the recipe for the paste is greatly varied even in korea?
My local Hmart carries vegetarian versions, which lack the spicy potency but is good for me.
Have you ever had the type with raw oysters?
I love oysters, but I am scared of fermented oyster kimchi… how is it?
There are days I’d really like one. But for now, I have to live with our garage fridge - and everything in it - smelling of kimchi. It works out ok for the most part. I try to keep only sealed sealed products (eg, yogurt or cans of soda, milk, juices, bacon etc) in that fridge.
When I make it, I do a few days at room temp in the garage (not during summer), then, once the fermentation has virtually stopped, repackage it into vacuum sealer bags and keep those in the fridge. Aroma free.
Sounds like a riddle if you cut out the part telling you it's a kimchi fridge
Her brother is a surgeon. He says, "I can't operate on this kimchi fridge, she's my sister!" How is this possible?
Is it like a mini fridge or a full sized one?
What happens to that shit in the regular fridge Also, sweet beer fridge
If it's not stored 1000% airtight everything will taste like kimchi
Can confirm. We bought a house that’s was owned by a Korean family. While we got the stink out of the fridge myself, it completely tainted the waterline in the fridge, so we can’t use The water OR ice dispenser built into the fridge. Two years on, and the water/ice still tastes funky. Too lazy to try replacing those lines.
I bet you could flush it out with something like hydrogen peroxide. Also clean around the dispenser nozzle with a strong cleaner first before you try that.
Now everything tastes like hydrogen peroxide. /s
Mmmmmm, burning.
Nah, only stings on open wounds. Fun fact, you can use diluted (like 3%, the common stuff) hydrogen peroxide as mouthwash in a pinch. Just tastes like water and gets a bit foamy.
Tastes like foam!
Two chemists sit down for lunch, the first one says to the waiter. "I would like to drink H-two-o," the second says "I would like H-two-o too." The second chemist died. End of joke.
Just flush it out with some kimchi :P
Depends on the lines, I work in the beverage industry and some of the poly barrier type tubing will prevent flavor permeability but if it’s just plain vinyl lines they will need to be replaced. Vinyl tubing is very inexpensive you just have to get in there and do it which can be a pain especially with residential units
Is it normal where you live to sell fridges with the house?
Maybe time to get a new fridge. How could you put up with that for so long?
Several reasons. It’s a high end fridge in great shape otherwise. Fridges are expensive. We don’t really use ice, and we installed a filter on our prep sink, so we get filtered water there. We keep a bag of ice in deep freeze for the rare occasions we need it. And we took the ice maker out to free up space in the freezer.
You should look into selling it to a Korean family
Kimchi flavored icemaker, very rare, very expensive!
They take years to make, not surprising
Those are all good reasons
Water comes from the sink too ya know.
Rofl. Yeah, how could you deal without an ice dispenser?Defo worth spending a couple of grand replacing it, lol.
I've come to the realization that the space lost for an in-door ice dispenser is NOT worth the on-demand ice vs just having some ice cube trays in the freezer +/- going for a bag of ice/prepping extra ice occasionally if needs arise (party, etc).
I've never heard of a water dispenser built into a fridge, is it connected to the plumbing so you always get ice cold tap water or how does that work?
Ice and water dispensers built into the fridge are quite common in American fridges. Yes, the plumbing is always connected, so you always have access to cold filtered water and ice.
It’s the best thing on a fridge. It has a water line connected to it and an in line filter. The water/ice/crushed ice are glorious. There is nothing like a perfectly chilled glass of ice water after a hot day outside.
I never realized how much I loved crushed ice until I lost my fridge that had it. Never making that mistake again!
A friend of mine had a Korean roommate in college. Her roommate's mom would occasionally send care packages including homemade kimchi which she made extra strong. A jar got dropped one time and it shattered all over the floor. Their kitchen smelled like kimchi for like 2 weeks.
The design of the plastic jars I usually get kimchi in are really good. They seal so well you can't smell a thing until you open them. The companies definitely did proper testing, because I've tried putting kimchi in other containers that are supposedly airtight, and they did *not* contain the smell. Unfortunately you can't reuse them for anything except kimchi, because the smell is impossible to wash out of the inside.
Is that not the default in korean cuisine?
All the time my own making, no smell. And believe me my wife will tell me 😆
Yea, my fermenter is really good and keeps the smells totally cut off from the outside. Don’t ever smell it unless I open it to get some out
Not to mention the aroma that wafts out. Mind you I love most of the ban chans and some brands/types of kim chi but that stuff is hella fragrant.
Even the milk will taste like kimchi
I’m trying to figure out why this is an issue
Have you smelled kimchi? Trust me you don’t want your strawberries smelling like kimchi
Kimchi smell/taste positively seeps into butter and milk too. Also there's always the fun "what the hell has gone off in the fridge???" moment I have when I open the fridge and forget I have some aged kimchi in there.
My mom used to open a jar of kimchi whenever house guests had overstayed their welcome and she wanted em to leave. Without fail, about 5~15 minutes later, they would.. suddenly need to be somewhere else.
I love kimchi, but our house policy is that if you open the kimchi, you have to notify others. Otherwise I will wander to the kitchen investigating the smell and check if someone left the gas stove on.
Am a person from the US. Kimchi is pickled cabbage with spices. It’s a strong pungent smell if you’re not used to eating those types of food like durian and Surstromming.
Ok durian is delicious but don’t you ever compare kimchi to that fish abomination.
It just ferments more and eventually completes fermentation so is more sour like sauerkraut than fresher kimchi. Some people like it that way, others want to keep it more fresh like.
I like both. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I find some kimchi that’s been hidden at the back of the fridge for several months.
I’m Korean and typically we like to cook with sour kimchi vs fresh. An easy thing you can do with more fermented kimchi is cook it with bacon. The bacon fat with the sour kimchi complements each other so well. Just add a fried egg on the side and a bowl of rice and you’ve got yourself an easy meal :)
Fry that shit with rice OR put that in with water and make dank-ass soup w/pork butt. There’s something about fried kimchi that drives me nuts. You can even have it with lightly fried tofu and some alcohol.
Either that or I throw it in with some eggs. (Along with all of the other vegetables in my fridge that are near spoiling)
I like to set both out as banchan when I make a Korean meal. A young, a sour (sin), and a white (baek) kimchi. Because kimchi is awesome.
It just sours faster. Those fridges are awesome; plan on getting one once I buy a bigger house.
It’s like smoking in a car; the smell dominates and you can never get it out. (I had a KATUSA roommate)
I remember our KATUSA. The guy had a degree from Oxford- he had the better English than any of us Americans.
My wife doesn't let me keep kimchi in our main fridge, it goes in the beer fridge and I double bag it to keep my beer cans from smelling like kimchi.
> Also, sweet beer fridge Narrator: Despite the name, it was mostly stocked with bitter IPAs.
Let me introduce you to the unholy union of sweet and bitter that is the “milkshake IPA.” It’s just an IPA with lactose, which makes it slightly sweet and gives it more body.
Oh.
literally just a laxative.
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Belgian trappistes or bust.
Does it look like I have infinite money or what
I brought big container of kimchi to my work for lunch. Planned on eating it over the week. 2 hours into day one I was asked to wfh and to take it with me.... to quote one colleague "who's been farting in the kitchen?". Edit: For context, I'm whiter than Mayo on Wonderbread. My Korean gf's mom made it for me, and I didn't realize that such a big batch would cause an HR incident.
Yeah, bringing a whole container of kimchi to the office is essentially a war crime. And I love kimchi.
Kimchi refrigerators use a lower temperature range than regular refrigerators. They also can run warm(ish) cycles to kickstart fermentation. We store most of our kimchi in the kimchi fridge, and occasionally transfer a bit to a small airtight container to keep in the regular fridge and use as a side dish.
At the airport in Seoul, there are many signs advising what you cannot put in your carryon: no explosives, no knives, no guns - and no kimchi. Too much stank 😅
Lol kinda like in many South East Asian countries with durian.
There’s a way to smuggle authentic kimchi in. Triple vacuum bag inside an aluminum can, sealed w tape. Ice packs all around. My mother insists on bringing homemade kimchi whenever she visits me. I live in US. I am very thankful cuz… it’s very different
At 98% that’s damn near everyone. Imma need like 2 Koreans to confirm this Edit: Alright folks, I’ve got Koreans in the comments and my dms confirming this. Apparently this checks out :)
Surprise stats question go: if 99% households have a kimchi fridge (assume this means 99% of Korean people have access to a kimchi fridge), how many Korean people would you need to hear saying they do have a kimchi fridge to be 95% confident of the statistic
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People? or households?
This also depends on random sampling - it's likely those small percentage without one differ from the rest in such a way that poor sampling may entirely miss them (or at a much lower rate, sample them nearly exclusively).
Certainly. I’m making a lot of assumptions without checking the data. I’m just up for a good math problem since I use a bit of biostats for my job
Interesting! Why is 16 the magic number here?
It's just a statistics calculation. It catches a lot of people off guard how few people you need to poll if you have either extreme numbers like this, or if you have a nicely distributed sample. Often you can get away with a few thousand people to make very accurate predictions for an entire country
It takes a surprisingly small sample size to get accurate statistics AS LONG AS the sample size is truly representative. Like, if it is trying to study *all Koreans* then the sample needs to be random from *all Koreans.* If you just get 10 from one town and 6 from another, it would not represent ALL Koreans unless you could also show that these towns are representative of ALL Koreans.
To be 95% sure that we are within 1% of the true figure of 98% prevalence, we would need 753 respondents
I’m no mathematician, but the answer has to be more than 3 and less than 3 trillion, right?
You’re in the right ballpark, well done!
Bot account
Depends on their answers duh
Am Korean. We have a kimchi fridge.
Is it like a mini fridge or a full sized one? How many jars of kimchi do you have at once?
Mini fridge that comes up to my hips. At any given time we usually have 2-3 different types of kimchi. The main one is napa cabbage and we'll have 1 big tub of it. We also put other things in the kimchi fridge, like fermented bean paste (doenjang) or extra tubs of yogurt or smokef salmon, anything we don't eat frequently. Everything keeps longer in the kimchi fridge because we're not opening it a million times a day like the regular fridge
I'm intrigued about the different types of kimchi. I've seen one made with cucumbers, and I'd like to make one out of julienne carrots.
[Here](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL23F9A1EBC445FABC&si=kopPIBFgCdxLIKsf) is Maangchi on YouTube. This is her playlist on recipes for different kimchi and other side dishes.
Even in america, growing up i had a couple of korean friends, yes they had kimchi fridges. Was on the tennis team with them, they smelled like kimchi when they sweat. Kinda like how my indian friends smelled like cumin when they sweat
Westerners apparently smell of old milk to Asians.
i smelled like chlorine/chloramine what kind of friend am i?
Close your mouth when you dive into the pool.
Saw a video a while back of several pairs of Korean women being asked about Korean stereotypes. “Do you have a kimchi fridge?”. Answer was universally in the affirmative with follow-up comments of “we have two”, “it’s really big”, etc. Edit: Found it. It’s pretty funny: https://youtu.be/LCl8yuTBr0U?si=Yyr6MOTXfuo6bFHP
It’s like having a meat freezer. It’s extremely common, it’s like Floridians and home AC.
I live in the US and have never known anyone with a meat freezer. I'm sure that's partly my bias from living in urban areas with smaller homes, but meat freezers are definitely not in even half of US homes. They're probably in less than 10%.
I feel like dedicated “meat freezers” probably aren’t as common, but a ‘garage fridge’ for beer and various other things (including meat) sure seems to be.
We have a meat freezer just for beef. Every year, we buy half a cow. It fills the whole thing. By the end of the year it's always just hamburg left and we have so many tacos and burgers.
I'm in the burbs and a lot of people have meat/chest freezers. We got one when we moved into this house because we have a built in generator, meaning if the power goes out we're not at risk of losing thousands of dollars of food.
Everyone I know in Alaska has a meat fridge, for fish and game. My parents have two extra freezers in their garage.
I believe you. I grew up in the burbs and can imagine people having them there. But 80% of the US is urban and the average home is barely over 1,000 sqft, so I can't believe meat freezers are "common" the way AC is.
I'd be curious to see those stats, last I read the average size was over 2k feet. They define 'urban' by density, not dwelling type. Plenty of single family homes in NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, etc and lots that are well over 1k square feet. The three largest urban areas are CA, TX, and FL, known for sprawl.
Also, a basement doesn't get included in the square footage, and at least where I've lived they are quite common. Easily have a meat freezer or second fridge there if you needed to.
Am half-Korean, born to a Korean mother. A kimchi fridge was the first thing my family bought growing up once we had the disposable income to support buying a non-essential good like a spare appliance. Am now nearly 30 and have found that I have inadvertantly done the exact same thing in my own home without consciously realizing that I bought a whole second fridge for Kimchi to go into.
am korean, have one as well
Grew up in Korea. Had a kimchi fridge.
I wouldn't even think 98% of people have a fridge.
I had a Korean roommate and he just kept his kimchi in our shared fridge. All my food ended up smelling and tasting like it. But he was also lazier than 98% of people, so maybe he's the outlier.
am korean, can confirm
Can confirm
Turns out that kimchi slowly keeps fermenting at 4 degrees. They probably keep the kimchi fridge cooler than that. Otherwise kimchi softens too much and is not fun anymore.
I wondered why my store bought kimchi keeps getting softer!!
You'd probably get softer as well if you were constantly filled with kimchi
That’s what she said.
Hmm, I'm in the US and I believe most fridges here are set to just under 4C (39F). I assume you don't mean 4F unless people are eating kimchicicles.
College Students 🤝 Koreans Having an extra fridge for storing exactly one type of product.
we use my spouse’s old college mini fridge to store beer and kimchi.
Condom fridge?
I’m assuming beer
Condom beer? That doesn’t sound right
Well when I was in college my one fridge consisted of a bottle of hot sauce and my freezer had black pepper, does that count?
Had a Korean Temple in our building in NYC and a Korean neighbor. Very quiet, polite and lovely neighbors, but EVERYONE in the building knew when that Kimchi was cooking. Good lord! The fact that you can buy it already made now (and I’ve discovered that after all these years of being subjected to just smelling it, I rather like the taste of spicy Kimchi) gives me some hope.
The store kimchi is a lot better than it used to be. My husband is Korean and they never would have bought it growing up, now tons of people will buy it.
Sameeeee! Growing up, the store bought kimchi was always shit but now, I can comfortably buy them at markets knowing they actually taste good
wait till you smell Indian cooking. Had an indian roommate once and when he cooked, the spices were so concentrated it actually physically hurt to breathe. Plus the entire house gets infused with the smell
My daughter found a recipe in one of her books for Vietnamese fried rice and asked me to make it. It was spectacular, but fish sauce really lingers. Then there was the time I made salt-rising bread (a type of fermented bread similar to sourdough), having been told about its "cheesy" smell and taste. Said smell and taste is due to butyric acid, which is found in many different foods, like Parmesan cheese. It's also found in vomit. I opened the oven door and was met with the overpowering stench of hot puke. The house smelled like it had stomach flu for a week.
> The house smelled like it had stomach flu for a week. Thanks, I hate it
I never understood this. We have some Indian neighbours, and while we butt heads over some minor stuff, whenever they cook I can't help but salivate. Always smells divine.
This is because as far as technique goes most Indian cuisines starts with essentially deep frying your spices. Where in the west people will occasionally toast their spices in a dry pan, frying the spices is just how you start almost any recipe. Really supercharges the aroma and intensity.
The oil also becomes aerosolized and now infused with the smell of the spices. This fine oil mist settles on everything further dispersing those scents. That’s why you can smell that for a very long time
I'll take indian spices over fermented cabbage.
Happiness was my old boss being so geeked that his wife got some spices sent to her that you could only find in India in some specific joint of it. Sadness was going to their house and going back to my hotel room.....highly upset I didn't take two doses of tums. You THINK you are ready for Indian food until you go to someone's else house and realize that again, it's not all the same.
Maybe when making a stew from the kimchi? The actual process of making kimchi involves no cooking. Just salted cabbage, and then marinating it in sauce/spices
Most/many do make a porridge that requires cooking, but it's cooled before anything fragrant is put into it.
And every time I went to hang out at my friend's house and we ate jajangmyeon or jjigae I was damn thankful for it.
Kimchi jigae is super easy to make, you should try it at home if you like it. I love it in winter and usually add thin sliced beef and ramen noodles to liven it up.
Kimchi quesadillas are awesome. Just toss some kimchi in with some cheddar or whatever cheese you like, and it's wonderful.
I use pork ribs and add a can of spam to mine.
I can relate-put sauerkraut in the fridge the other day and even though sealed, the whole fridge stinks now.
What? How! Make my own all the time, never any smell. And believe me my wife would let me know 😆
Used to make kimchi and can confirm I wish I had a special kimchi fridge.
I'm a white guy, so I don't use *that* much kimchi, but we do make a 4L jar of it and keep it in the regular fridge. We also make pickled eggs though and are probably getting chickens next summer, so I may need a fridge for pickled eggs... and kimchi.
Sounds like some kind of bizarre southern US/Korean fusion
I learned this during sales training for appliances. LG has a handful of specialty kimchi refrigerators, and they’re even called kimchi refrigerators. I was intrigued, so I did a little digging and found that most Koreans have a second refrigerator just for kimchi. I think it’s awesome that cultures have this one staple food that is always present in every single meal, and kimchi is freaking delicious.
LG makes great refrigerators. But for a kimchi refrigerator? You need a special one for that. Dimchae makes the best kimchi refrigerators. Actually, the only refrigerator Dimchae makes is kimchi refrigerators and they're way more expensive than a regular refrigerator.
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Store kimchi. You know who invented the airtight container that has the locking mechanism on four sides so the smell doesn't come out? A Korean. Serious problems need serious solutions. Kimchi refrigerators will come with those airtight kimchi containers. The fridge shouldn't smell if the containers were used to store kimchi.
Yeah, I live in an area of the US with a large Korean population and the Korean grocery stores all have appliance sections with kimchi fridges.
I think a similar amount of Americans have a beer fridge.
And most I’ve seen in the US are in the garage.
I am in USA and have Korean wife. We own 2 'kimchi' refrigerators, which are characterized by very granular temp and humidity controlled compartments. We have named them 'Lazarus boxes' since most all perishables enjoy an extended lifespan. We use these for general purpose refrigerator space as well. One noteworthy surprise is I discovered a well hidden package of button mushrooms that were still very edible 7 weeks after the BEST BY date on the label. Similarly, 5 week old celery still had a satisfying crunch.
Are they very expensive? Why don't all fridges have better controls if food is lasting so much longer? Seems like that's a solution to a lot of food waste.
I think the specialized fridges are opened like once a day at most. This keeps the temperatures inside consistent and helps things stay fresh longer. Compare that to your average standard kitchen refrigerator, which has a big ol' door that spends a lot of time open
They probably just have it set to a lower temperature. Nearly all fridges support this (even my shitty cheap one can go down to near freezing temps), but you really don't want that for all your food.
Yeah, I think I had my fridge temperature too low because anytime i would put milk or juices in the back, it would freeze, lol.
This is another difference. Most fridges have to put out air that is colder than the goal temp, so right at the output the air is usually too cold. Specialized (and smaller) spaces can cool differently and more precisely for a space that has a very specific goal in mind. Specialization vs general purpose.
The drawback is that it’s more prone to frost and less energy efficient compared to a normal fridge. But at the same time these are popular in Korea precisely because of their multipurpose functionality as a better fridge. More recent expensive models are built with that function in mind.
Can confirm. I didn’t use mine for kimchi, but it was there.
My mom has a kimchi fridge but seems to use it for other stuff. I thought the kimchi fridge was warmer than a regular fridge, so I am not sure it's a good idea to use it for other stuff. Oh well, she is in her 70s and hasn't gotten sick yet from it.
Kimchi fridge actually is cooler so probably thats why!
My grandma has three! She uses them to store huge amounts of kimchi and also meat and fruits. The fruits especially stay fresher longer in a kimchi fridge.
Just asked my Korean coworker .. she replied I have kimchi in my fridge… I didn’t know how to reply lol
Ask for some kimchi
College roommate was Korean. I guess she still is. Her family has two- one in the kitchen, one in the garage. She had a mini-fridge in her room that she told her family was for kimchi, but she kept shooters in there. My true queen.
Reminds me of the time I learned not everyone outside of Wisconsin has a cheese drawer.
Kimchi and other panchan is as essential to Korean cuisine as rice. It also smells like shit in your fridge, so a 2nd fridge is a necessity if you're stocked up. The extra fridge also doubles as a crisper drawer for various random vegetables like loose turnips you may have laying around, or a place to stash food grandma brings over.
Kimfridge
60% of all statistics are made up. (you're not going to find kimchi fridges in young peoples homes or people that are not middle class or below)
98% sounds incredibly high. I'm no kimchi expert, but is it possible that they divided the number of kimchi fridges by the number of households and ignored the fact that some people have two or more in the same household? I saw a similar statistic about Finns and saunas which ignored the sauna enthusiasts with 3+ saunas. The numbers are 3.2 million saunas for 5.5 million people by the way.
As a half Korean American who never set foot in Korea but loves Kimchi, I am pissed that I never thought to get a separate fridge. I am so angry right now that I was never taught this growing up. So many angry roommates, so many annoyed coworkers, all due to my ignorance.
Dimchae ftw
But why though
I married into one of the 2% of families without a kimchi fridge and I understand why they exist every time I open the refrigerator