For a Master Class in Salt, Try Making Kimchi

It turned out Soo Jin wasn’t completely winging it. She used a 200-milliliter paper cup as a sort of measuring device from time to time to keep her in the ballpark, then fine-tuned from there by tasting.

While her brined cabbage quarters dripped into the sink, she puréed onion, ginger, garlic, apple, and Korean radish with a dasima (dried kelp) broth that had been fortified with dried prawns and a dried pollack head.

At this point, she put on a pair of gloves, a step that no one who will later use their hands to touch other sensitive body parts should skip. She grabbed the gochugaru, poured it over a bowl of Korean radish chopped into matchsticks, added 150 milliliters-plus-a-splash of fish sauce, then a big spoonful of saujeot—salt and salt, really—before taking a tiny bite. Next, she threw in 30-odd quartered scallions and gave it all a mighty two-handed stir before dividing the mixture into three bowls, one for each head of cabbage.

Every cabbage leaf got attention, a dollop of paste spread on each, before the soft, leafy end of each quarter was folded down, and the whole thing carefully swaddled inside the outermost leaf. Since my sister-in-law translated, Soo Jin had not addressed me directly the whole time I was there, but here she turned to me and deposited one spicy, garlicky cabbage leaf rolled into a bite-sized dumpling, directly into my mouth with her still-gloved hand, then made one for herself. Our noses ran and our eyes went wide. It was raw, but good. I was glad I had that taste, a benchmark before salt, microbes, and time started doing their thing in earnest.

And there, as salty sweat beaded on my scalp, was my answer: Taste as you go. Whether it’s what their families taught them or something they’d picked up on TV, or both, my Korean guides weren’t flying blind. The flavors they created during kimchi making were strong, sometimes extremely so, but by tasting along the way they could confirm where they were on the map and know whether they were heading in the right direction or needed to course correct. If it was tasting particularly salty in an early step, they could back off a bit later and know that flavors would mellow and change as the kimchi fermented.

Back at home in Seattle, I made batches using recipes from trusted sources like Eric Kim and Deuki Hong. I wasn’t at the point where I could wing it—far from it, really—but I tasted as I went and was learning those benchmark flavors, and I could imagine getting there one day.