This now-global food is one of the world’s greatest side dishes

The dish

Kimchi, South Korea

Plate up

Kimchi - from South Korea to the world. Credit: iStock

It’s a huge honour for a country to create a food that goes global, a dish or ingredient that other cultures pick up and begin using as their own. The great food nations of the world have all done it. And for South Korea, it’s kimchi. You probably know this spicy, sour, fermented dish in its most popular form, made with napa cabbage.

However, kimchi encompasses a wide range of salted, fermented vegetables, everything from Korean radishes (similar to daikon) to burdock roots, cucumber, eggplant, mustard greens, soybean sprouts and bamboo shoots. The common factors are the strong flavours achieved through fermentation (though there are also unfermented versions) and the use of chilli powder, garlic, ginger and salted seafood. This is one of the world’s great side dishes – and it’s good for you, too.

First serve

Kimchi was born of necessity. If you live in a cold country and want to continue eating vegetables throughout winter, you need to preserve them. And so, during Korea’s Silla period (around the first century BC to the 10th AD), people began salting vegetables, mainly radishes, and storing them in pickling jars. By the 17th century, napa cabbages had been introduced to Korea and rapidly gained popularity and, more excitingly, a new, exotic product was also about to arrive on Korean shores: the chilli pepper. This was a game-changer that would become vital to the kimchi process. This dish has now been inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list.

Order there

You will struggle to find a restaurant in South Korea that doesn’t serve kimchi. For this story, we suggest Jihwaja, a banchan (small dishes) specialist in Seoul.

Order here

In Sydney, sample all sorts of kimchi at Sang by Mabasa in Surry Hills. Melburnians, you’re sure to be served kimchi at the amazing Chae. In Brisbane, hit up Maru Korean BBQ.

One more thing

How important is kimchi to the Korean diet? In 2008, South Korea’s first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, did a stint at the International Space Station, and she was sent there with something very important: specially engineered “space kimchi”. A month is too long to go without.