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And odor. Kimchee taste really does work itself into things in the fridge.

I recall a roommate from decades ago (son of Korean immigrants) mention that his parents always kept a small side fridge / mini-fridge for the kimchee, so everything else in the standard fridge wouldn't adopt the flavor -- I think a comment of his was "kimchee flavored butter is not pleasant."

> I think a comment of his was "kimchee flavored butter is not pleasant."

Hah, I saw video recipes of kimchi and gochujang-garlic flavored butter last year. Tho probably both were eye-catching online culinary fads rather than practical products.

Woman whose channel I follow uses both plastic and ceramic containers for kimchi - both include a small valve in the lid to allow exchange of air. And of course cabbage lands in that special fridge; she said she uses it also for storing vegetables and rice

My one weird kimchi fusion experiment that's worked out beyond all reason was making a classic cheese-crusted German pasta casserole with kimchi in the mix ... it's so addicting it probably needs to be regulated.

Kimchi seems to love cheese. The “Kim-cheese” is a staple in my house - a classic grilled cheese with chopped kimchi inside. So, so good.

I started using gochujang in soups to boost the flavor - tomato one gets a serious kick now

try og gochujang jjigae

Coming from the other side, you can make traditional kimchi fried rice and top that with mozzarella and run it on microwave for 30 seconds (or put it in an oven if you want to be fancy). Perfect match.

That sounds great, especially as I love that little fried kimchi rice chaser at the end of a table-fried bbq/meal. It's that little extra course of comfort.

I would love to know the recipe!

Article claims this fridge is colder than a regular one "to facilitate fermentation", but this doesn't make any sense. Fermentation is completely stopped in a regular fridge, you need higher temperature for fermentation.

Also this is not corroborated by any of the references in the article, which make no such claims about temperature. I am sure there are interesting reasons why one might want such a dedicated fridge, but the wikipedia article doesn't elucidate this mystery. The wikipedia article is basically garbage.

IIRC this is actually the main purpose of one of these, they run slightly warmer to keep fermentation going while still being cold enough to preserve. Traditonal kimchi was stored underground so maybe a temp close to those conditions.

That makes it warmer than regular fridges, while wikipedia claims the opposite.

Not really, the advertised temperatures of most brands' kimchi fridges[1] are -1°C (with lower -0.5°C band of stability as well), which is supposed to be mimicking "buried outside in Korean winters" condition.

[1] Example here https://www.lge.co.kr/support/product-manuals?title=manual&m..., see table on page 10, it's between -0.7°C and -1.7°C for kimchi.

I think a better expression would be "to regulate fermentation." Kimchi lasts quite a bit longer when stored in kimchi fridge, because (I assume) fermentation almost stops, due to consistently low temperature. But obviously you don't want it to freeze (frozen kimchi tastes absolutely terrible), so the fridge must stay just above the freezing temperature, for it to work well.

And in my experience, every kimchi eventually goes sour in regular fridge (or even in a special kimchi fridge, if you keep it long enough), so I don't think fermentation completely stops at those temperatures.

Of course when it's going sour it almost becomes a different food and entirely different recipes open up (like Kimchi Jjigae, Budae Jjigae, or basically anything with stir fried pork).

Maybe it should say something like: to assist in halting the fermentation process, which otherwise could cause the Kimchi to spoil.

Assuming that’s correct, I’m no Kimchi Engineer.

I like to eat my kimchi at room temperature, so I tend to keep a small amount out of the fridge ready for my next session.

Yeah, if you read the Korean language article[0] (or the Namu.wiki article[1]), they both refer it the function as preserving and storing kimchi, not really going for further fermenting. Most folks I know buy prepared kimchi and use the fridge to store / have it last a while (as well as using it as a secondary fridge). Given that optimal kimchi ripening goes from 2d to 35d changing the temperature from 20°C to 4°C[2], I suspect it would take an enormous time trying to ripen it purely in the -1°C fridge (typical kimchi fridge temperature).

[0] https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EA%B9%80%EC%B9%98%EB%83%89%EC... [1] https://namu.wiki/w/%EA%B9%80%EC%B9%98%EB%83%89%EC%9E%A5%EA%... [2] https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1750-384...

> Fermentation is completely stopped in a regular fridge, you need higher temperature for fermentation.

My understanding as a hobbyist brewer and fermenter is that this is not true. Fermentation is greatly slowed at lower temperatures, but you should have things happening above freezing. Lager beers, for example, go from pure sugar to beer at 35F. And kimchi matures at fridge temperatures in ways that I'm pretty sure are caused by fermentation.

A short and dubious description I've read on a magazine article decades ago claimed that these have a temperature profile to go between heating and cooling for desired effects over time, by the tone in scale of weeks to months. I don't know how or what they do with Kimchi in Korea but there are probably lots of obviouses around it that needs context to realize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onggi

They sit outside year round.

Yeah, you're right.

A kimchi fridge I've owned had a temperature dial with a little chart next to it, that if I recall advised around 1-4C for halting fermentation for long-term storage and around 11 or above for active fermentation, and encouraged being mindful of the stage in your kimchi's, uh, lifecycle.

Pretty interesting to find a flat-out-wrong Wikipedia article in this day and age!

Thanks, that is interesting to know. I don't like kimchi (it's just worse sauerkraut) but I ferment other things and I always wanted a fridge just for that. I didn't know these things existed.

Can't you just leave it outside to ferment, then bring it into the fridge to halt?

Not really, no. The microbial culture composition is strongly dependent on temperature. Yeast prefers high temperature while bacteria in general prefers a lower temperature. Each specific thing you ferment has an optimal fermentation temperature. Plus there are other temperature effects unrelated to the culture itself. For example, enzymatic activity, which is also dependent on temperature, might destroy whatever you are trying to ferment before it ferments enough.

In practice, you will get a poor result if you ferment at high temperature. Texture goes off first, but you can also get weird alcohols or formaldehyde forming.

From my experience, the lower the temperature (and the slower the fermentation), the more complex the flavor. This rule seems to hold for almost everything, from vegetables, to kombucha, to bread, etc. For beer, it depends what kind of beer you like. You can get very funky beers at high temperatures.

In 2000 I moved into a shared house in NJ. A few weeks into living there we noticed a growing awful smell coming from the basement. We found that the previous residents had left their kimchi fridge full of kimchi … and had unplugged it before they left.

Fermented foods are a particular interest of mine. I am by no means an expert but I love that we can take very perishable ingredients and make them into other food stuffs using fermentation. Tea, milk, vegetables, bread, etc. can all be fermented and yeast and SCOBY can do so much for us. It’s amazing.

Haven't seen these in a while, but the H Marts in Washington state would stock a couple of the newest LG ones.

Kimchi is so important in Korean culture they sent it with their astronauts

"If a Korean goes to space, kimchi must go there, too"

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/world/asia/22iht-kimchi.1...

Is there a good one that can work through -20°F winters? Would love to put one in my garage. (Ideally with custom panelling compatability.)

I'm sorry for sounding obtuse but why do you need a fridge when the outside temperature is already -20°F?

Because it’s cool storage not frozen storage. The garage will vary dramatically through the year in temperature.

Modern fridges can’t handle that unless specifically designed for it. I had a repair person guess that I’d lowered the life of a fridge because I don’t use ac in the summer much and therefore my house had much wider variants in humidity than designed for.

You can’t really blame the manufacturers, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to worry too much about it when the average consumer keeps their fridge in a really small temperature zone.

But the garage fridge is going extinct.

How much kimchi are you eating?

> How much kimchi are you eating?

It's one of the three foods that I will eat until it no longer exists in the vicinity. (Jerky and hummus.)

I love Koreans. Come on, let's all get on board. The Germans never did a Sauerkraut fridge. :)

As a German married to a Korean, it was a definite upgrade to my Sauerkraut.

Jokes aside, the kimchi fridge is indeed quite common in Korea, and the household justification is typically that you don't want the kimchi's aroma to interact with all your other refrigerated food supply.

Especially the older generation makes kimchi infrequently in large batches, and it's very common to share the fruits of the labor among the different households in the family (you often leave with it on family visits), so it's routinely well stocked with the remains of various batches.

I'm most familiar with the single or double drawer types, integrated into the more modern kitchen aisles, making it easy to tower above and access the tubs/jars/containers. Since you usually wind up having one anyway, you're also gonna use it.

Almost no one makes their own sauerkraut in Germany (except some hippies/hipsters maybe) - it’s dirt cheap to buy and really good.

I might be ignorant but for me the flavour of kimchi is far more complex and varied - sauerkraut is pretty much always the same.

The problem with kimchi is that it is spicy. I won't understand why you'd ruin a perfectly good sauerkraut by making it spicy.

If you make your own sauerkraut, or anything else fermented really, the flavour is much more complex and varied than the store bought stuff.

There's quite a few different variants of kimchi, including non-spicy ones, known as white kimchi (백김치): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baek-kimchi

There's also diced radish kimchis (깍두기), sometimes non-spicy as well.

It's also the OG kimchi as Koreans didn't have red peppers until the Columbian Exchange (but have been preserving vegetable via brines since the Three Kingdoms era)!

Thanks, I will check it out!

If you can't eat normal kimchi due to spiciness, there are variants of kimchi that aren't spicy and resemble sauerkraut or doesn't even include cabbage at all.

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A chest freezer with a temp controller would be quite similar. You might need a fan and simple heat source as well. For about $200 I was able to buy and setup one for beer fermentation.

Costco sells chest freezer fridges. No mods.

Every chest freezer that I have come accross in the last 20 years had a dial to control temperature all the way from fridge (~5°C) to deep freeze (~-18°C).

Beer fermentation is very sensitive to temperature, so a very common mod is to get a digital heat/cool temperature control and splice it into the electrics. The heat output is wired to an incandescent bulb or reptile heat pad or something thats placed inside with the beer fermentor.

I think it would be appropriate to translate and share one of Korea's memes here.

Foreign Guy: I heard that there are refrigerators specifically for kimchi in Korea. Is that true? Me: Yeah, not everyone in Korea has one, but I do. Foreign Guy: I've asked this for the 10th time now, and everyone has answered the same way.

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