Caption There is some toxicity in salt. So, if the bittern doesn’t completely come out,
when you the squeeze the salt, the salt must be fully dry.
NA She only uses salt which is at least 3 years old.
The older the salt, the better the flavor.
Making kimchi is a strain on the back.
Day two.
They clean the salted cabbage.
200 heads of cabbage! That’s a considerable number.
Lately, a 4-person household uses 10 heads of cabbage when making kimchi. So, this farm produces enough for 20 households.
While the water is draining from the cabbages, she steeps anchovies and shiitake mushrooms in a large cauldron.
She still uses wood to light her fire.
Caption The smell from the fire is good because I’m using pine wood.
NA She’s making porridge from the broth.
In order to prevent the glutinous rice from burning and sticking together too much, she stirs the mixture in this uncomfortable position for an hour above the hot steam.
When the porridge is complete, she prepares the kimchi-making sauce.
It shows that she has been preparing to make all year by using fermented anchovies prepared 3 years ago, fermented shrimp prepared last spring, and peppers plucked at the end of last summer.
After the porridge is made in the cauldron and then cooled, it is poured into a tub with the sauce.
Two tubs of this size are used to make the kimchi-making sauce.
These women work so hard to make kimchi that their backs ache.
After the sauce is mixed, the old women heads to the crock storage yard.
This is soy sauce. But there are glass-bead like bulbs stuck to the ladle.
Ah, they appear inside the crocks as well.
They are hardened salt formations.
These soy sauce crocks have been passed down in this family for generations.
Caption As my mother told me, there are separate sauce crocks. I shouldn’t use other crocks and I should only use these ones here.
My mother and her mother learned it this way.
It has been like this for many years. There is nothing to question.
If one is told to do something, one should do it. Life was bearable only if I did exactly what my mother-in-law told me to do.
NA The old women has something else to prepare with the soy sauce.
She mixes red pepper flakes, rice porridge, and fermented soy bean paste into vegetables she has been growing on her farm for a year.
This is a flavorful sauce called “jip-jang.”
Caption In the past, when the grass of compost is fully fermented, the jip-jang is put inside to ferment for three days and then removed to be eaten. It would be something we eat for a few days.