006 The Secrets of Kimchi With Hae Jung Cho

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Our guest on the sixth episode of the Root Simple podcast is professional cook and Los Angeles County Master Food Preserver Hae Jung Cho. During the show Hae Jung walks you through the ingredients you’ll need for a basic kimchi as well as how to make it. You’ll find the recipes below.

Hae Jung showing off her special kimchi gloves.

Hae Jung showing off her special kimchi gloves.

Here are the two recipes she walks through on the podcast:

Poggi Kimchi (Whole Napa Cabbage Kimchi)

Diced Radish Kimchi (Kkakdugi)

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During the podcast, Hae Jung mentions a book that contains just about all you’d ever want to know about how to make the many different varieties of kimchi: Good Morning Kimchi

Kimchi Classes
Hae Jung will also be teaching two classes in Los Angeles in August. The first will be on Saturday, August 2, from 10 am to approximately 1 pm. Here’s the info:

Details of Kimchi Class:
The 3-hour class will be a hands-on experience where you will make two kinds of fermented kimchi – napa cabbage (poggi kimchi) and radish (kkakdugi) – and one quick pickle.  We will then share a light meal of rice, kimchi, soup and other side dishes.  You will leave the class with three containers of kimchi and pickles that you have made, printed recipes and the know-how to replicate the kimchi at home.  Class size is limited to eight people. Cost:  $75.

Koreatown Market Tour
In addition, Hae Jung is organizing a guided tour of supermarkets and specialty food shops in Koreatown on the following Saturday, August 9.  This tour is geared toward people who want to shop for and eat Korean food at home, especially helpful for those who want to shop for kimchi ingredients. Cost: $25.

To sign up for the classes email Hae Jung at: [email protected].

If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. Additional music by Rho. A downloadable version of this podcast is here. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store. Note that it takes a few hours for the new episode to show up in iTunes.

The canning lid conundrum

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How do you guys store your used canning lids and rings?

We keep a lot of them around because we use canning jars for so many things other than canning: dry goods, leftovers, food-to-go, body care, etc.  My collection is driving me crazy.

Never was there a set of more awkward objects than a pile of slippery, jangly rings and lids.

Ideas?

[Mr. Homegrown in my Master Food Preserver mode chiming in here–as per USDA advice we use two piece canning lids only once for actual canning]

What’s the Best Solar Food Dryer?

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Appalachian Food Dryer. Image: Mother Earth News.

Dehydration is a great way to put up food. Second to freezing, it’s the best way to persevere nutrition without adding sugar or salt. And if you use the power of the sun, you won’t need to spend any money on electricity.

In a desert climate you can just put your food out on screened trays. But just a bit of humidity in the air makes this approach risky. Food can spoil before enough moisture is removed. That’s why you should build a solar food dryer.

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Brace Direct Food Dryer. Image: FAO.

There are two basic designs for solar food dryers: direct and indirect. Direct dryers are just a box with a piece of glass on the top. Indirect dryers use a box to collect the heat of the sun and then, thanks to the fact that hot air rises, take that heat up into an enclosed box that contains the food you want to dry.

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The Poisson Indirect Dryer. Image: Mother Earth News.

Which design works best? Dennis Scanlin, Coordinator of the Appropriate Technology Program and Professor of Technology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina has been studying solar food dryer technology for decades.  According to Scanlin, indirect drying is the way to go. Scanlin tested three dryers, the Appalachian Solar Food Dryer (an indirect dryer that he invented) against a direct dryer developed by the Brace Research Institute and the Poisson indirect dryer. In an article in Permaculture Activist, “Evaluating Solar Food Dryers: Stocking Up with Solar Power,” Scanlin says,

The Appalachian indirect dryer produced higher temperatures than the other two dryers and also removed more moisture from the tomatoes drying inside each day. In one test, the Appalachian dryer removed 32 oz. (0.95 L) of water during ta day, while the Brace direct dryer removed only 20 oz/ (0.59 L), and the Poisson dryer only 15 oz. (0.44 L). The Appalachian dryer was able to remove as much as 3.73 lb. (1.69 kg) of water in a single sunny day from tomatoes drying inside.

Scanlin also notes that direct dryers degrade the quality of the food and possibly nutritional value due to direct UV exposure.

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Our Appalachian Food Dryer, badly in need of a paint job.

We built a Appalachian Dryer several years ago and it works great. You do need to remember to bring in the food at night to prevent rehydration and spoilage (for some reason I often flake out and forget to bring in the food). For awhile I had an electric Excalibur Dehydrator on loan and it’s a lot more convenient. But, of course, it uses electricity and makes a lot of noise.

Since I built my Appalachian Dryer Scanlin has decided that it’s not necessary to use insulation. This makes the project even simpler. For just around $200 worth of materials you can easily make an Appalachian Dryer out of plywood nails and screws.

You can find plans for Scanlin’s dryer here.

Making Tofu From Scratch at the Institute of Domestic Technology

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Around once a month I teach a bread class at the one of a kind Institute of Domestic Technology, founded by our friend Joseph Shuldiner. The IDT is not your usual cooking school and its offerings are difficult to define succinctly. If I had to take a stab at explaining what the IDT does it would be that it teaches things worth doing from scratch that most people haven’t attempted since the pre-Betty Crocker era: cheesemaking, home coffee roasting, bacon curing, bread baking, jam and exotic projects like making your own nocino and toothpaste.

One of the perks of teaching at the IDT is getting to sit in on some of the other classes. The coffee roasting class changed my life. Now, every morning, I look forward to fresh coffee I roasted myself in a Whirley-Pop Popcorn maker. This past weekend I sat in a new IDT class taught by author Andrea Nguyen on how to make tofu from scratch.

Continue reading…

From the Archives: Loquat Leather

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Judging from the reaction to Mrs. Homegrown’s post yesterday it looks like some folks have a loquat obsession. Welcome home brothers and sisters.

At the risk of tooting my own loquat horn and repeating an old blog post, Mrs. H neglected to mention my controversial 2012 loquat leather experiment and recipe. You’ve still got to de-seed the damn things but at least there’s no need to skin them. Plus it makes use of booze.

I’ll admit it’s not a thrilling fruit leather but it’s not too bad.

Mrs. Homegrown chimes in:

My philosophy is simply that if one is going to go through the trouble of making fruit leather, preserves, pies etc., one should use outstanding fruit. The flavor tells in the end. After all, the starving times are not upon us. Even Erik can’t get super excited about this fruit leather–as I recall it tasted mostly of lemon and booze.

Then again, some people may have outstanding loquats–it sounds so from the comments on the last post. The ones we have access to just aren’t fantastic for preserving–too watery, too light. I just learned that there are over 800 cultivars of loquats, so there’s going to be lots of different loquat experiences.