Kimchi Culture in Korea
1. Climate and geographic conditions
The winter in Korea is long, cold and very dry due to the Siberian air pressure. It is difficult for crops and vegetables to grow in a cold environment. Therefore, Korean pickled vegetables using salt and other sauces to preserve vegetables longer during winter. Kimchi gradually becomes a popular dish in winter.
2. Great nutritions
Korean Kimchi, the famous fermented food, has vegetables as the main cooking material, and sometimes fruits and seafood and meat are used as ingredients. Kimchi has great nutritions. It has low calorie but high cellulose, vitamin A, B,C. Especially there exist a beneficial probiotics for human body. Kimchi has been praised to be one of the top five healthy food in the Health Magazine by The American Time Warner.
3. Kimchi is good for skin care
Some people wonder why Korean ladies have good and healthy skin. Kimchi is one of the answers to this question. The professor who has studied kimchi for a long time in Pusan National University indicated that the probiotics in kimchi can delay the aging of skin and lower the level of cholesterol in human body.
4. The most important reason is that kimchi becomes one component in Korean culture
The history of kimchi has been lasted for more than three thousand years. During Three Kingdoms of Korea, Korean learnt the way to preserve food from Chinese. Korean used fiddlehead, bamboo, eggplant, cucumber and radish with salt, congee, vinegar, alcohol and other sources.
Later on, during Kingdom of Goryeo, the technologies of planting vegetables had improved so that more and more new vegetables were grown. Korean added Chinese chives, celery and other vegetables in kimchi. Also, people discovered kimchi soup.
During the Kingdom of Joseon, Chinese cabbage became the major material and pepper became popular source of cooking.
The cooking history of kimchi has been experienced dynasties in Korea for a long time. It already has been a habit in Korea and involved in Korean culture.
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