Kimchi

Kimchi is napa cabbage salted, then packed with a paste of gochugaru, garlic, ginger and fish sauce and left to ferment. It is Korea's defining side dish, made fresh in most households and served with almost every meal.

What it really is

The cabbage is quartered and rubbed with salt, left for hours to draw out water and wilt, then rinsed. A paste goes on: gochugaru gives colour and heat, garlic and ginger the sharpness, spring onion and radish the crunch, and traditionally fish sauce or salted seafood for umami and to start fermentation. Packed tight into a jar with no air, it ferments at a cool temperature for days to weeks, souring gradually as lactic acid builds.

Baechu kimchi, made with napa cabbage, is the most familiar version, but the same method extends to radish, cucumber and other vegetables. Fresh kimchi is mild and crunchy; aged kimchi is sharper and sourer, and it is the aged kind that goes into kimchi jjigae, a stew, rather than onto the table as it is.

How it is served

• Cold, straight from the jar, as one of several small side dishes.
• Alongside rice at almost any meal, not as a dish on its own.
• Older, sourer kimchi cooked into stews, fried rice or pancakes rather than eaten raw.

How to write it on the menu

• Say whether it is made with fish sauce; a common substitution replaces it with soy sauce or salt for a vegan version.
• Note the spice level — gochugaru ranges from mild to hot.
• It is a fermented, live product: the flavour sharpens the longer it sits.