Kimchi is a staple of Korean cuisine. There are many variations, but at its most basic, kimchi is made from fermented vegetables like cabbage.
Most of the kimchi consumed in South Korea is made elsewhere, however. That’s simply because the country cannot produce enough of the dish to keep up with domestic demand.
Now, a Texas A&M University researcher is looking into whether Texas-made kimchi has a future on the global market.
Seockmo Ku is an assistant professor in the department of food science and technology at Texas A&M and he spoke to Texas Standard about his research. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Laura Rice: Can you tell us a little more about why there’s not enough kimchi produced in South Korea to meet demand?
Seockmo Ku: Okay, sure. Actually, Korea has a long history of growing cabbage for kimchi. Over time, the farmers developed strong systems that produced a consistent high-quality cabbage for fermentation.
However, now we are seeing what we call the Korean paradox. Korea eats the most kimchi in the world, but a large portion of B2B kimchi is actually imported, mainly from China. At the same time, the climate change is making things harder in the Korean peninsula. Some studies suggest that by the 2050s, most of these growing regions could disappear.
So Korea set the global standard, but long-term production is now under pressure.
Now, you are originally from South Korea yourself. Is it hard to find kimchi in College Station that measures up to the quality you might find back home?
Oh, not really. Actually, I came to United States about 12 or 13 years ago. At that time, I had a hard time to find kimchi from local grocery stores.
However, nowadays, we can easily purchase kimchi from more local grocery like HEB, Walmart, Aldi.
So what specific questions are you trying to answer about making kimchi in Texas?
Yeah, our research focuses on three main areas. First, how Texas soil and the growing conditions change Napa cabbage or cabbage quality and the fermentation results.
Second, how microorganisms move from soil to cabbage, then to kimchi and even to the gut.
And the last one is whether kimchi made with Texas ingredients can match traditional taste, while also meeting U.S. health guidelines, like reducing sodium.
And also, Texas is one of the ideal places to grow cabbage, as specifically we can grow in two different seasons. From spring, we can plant from late February to mid-March, and we can harvest the cabbage, which is raw ingredient of kimchi, in April and May. This works well for fresh-style kimchi.
And the fall to winter, we can also plant in late August and harvest from October through December. That timing is closer to the traditional kimchi cabbage. So we can grow cabbage twice a year.
So at Texas A&M, we work with the farmers, local farmers in College Station in the Bryan area to test crops, soil condition, and the planting timing. And we also study how soil microorganisms affect fermentation.
So we call this kind of sequence process as a soil-to-table, table-to gut approach.
So do you see this as both an opportunity for exports for farmers? But is the domestic demand for kimchi and fermented products also growing?
For me, we can see some opportunity about selling kimchi to outside of Texas or even outside of South Korea.
As present things stand, more than 99% of the B2B kimchi in South Korea is imported from certain countries like China. Texas has the potential to produce quality kimchi because we are growing a variety of raw materials in this state.
So using our existing resources, definitely we can provide some opportunity for our local farmers as well as local food producers.
One of your specialties is food safety. Do those U.S. regulations make buying fermented products like kimchi from someplace like Texas feel safer for those in South Korea?
As a food scientist, I can say that the United States has one of the super strict regulation-having countries in the world. So “made in the U.S.,” especially food, be the symbol of quality food products.
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