Curious Farm Spring Harvest Kimchi is clean and bright-tasting — with an approachable heat from the ginger and garlic and not too much from hot pepper.  This is a nice salad by itself.  Have it with rice or add it to soups.  Satisfy your inner fusion chef by adding it to a quesadilla.

Curious Farm Fall Harvest Kimchi has a similar, mild flavor profile as does our Mild Spring variety.  We use more onion and more dark greens to create a kimchi that tastes like autumn.

Curious Farm Spicy Radish Kimchi is traditional, crunchy and spicy — with deep, balanced heat and bursts of zingy ginger.  We serve this with rice, noodles, meats, or add the radish cubes to soup.  We are thrilled that you love this variety as much as we do.

Curious Farm Kimchi is vegan.  We don’t use fish sauce or shrimp in our recipes.  However, like most traditionally-made kimchi, Curious Farm Kimchi is rich in vitamin A, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), vitamin C, calcium, and healthy probiotics.  Not only does this fermenting method preserve nutrients, it actually increases the vitamins in the vegetables.  In 2008, Health magazine called kimchi one of the top five healthiest foods in the world.

We use traditional Korean methods of preserving vegetables to make our kimchi, but we always throw in a few surprises — delicate snow peas and pungent garlic scapes in spring, snappy green beans and chilies that grow well right here in Oregon during the summer.  I love making kimchi because this particular pickling technique keeps vegetables bright-tasting.  Because I am able to use a variety of just-picked vegetables, each batch seems like a flavor-filled snapshot of what’s happening in the garden during a particular week.

In Korea, kimchi is enjoyed for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Made from different seasonal vegetables and fermented for varying amounts of time, kimchi is a parade of the seasons.  There is spicy, deep-tasting, long-fermented kimchi to restore health and stamina during cold winter months.  There is bright-tasting, sweet, barely-fermented radish kimchi  to help the body cool during hot summers.

Not all kimchi is scorchingly hot.  In a well-made kimchi, the heat should be balanced by sour, bitter (as in the grounding taste from leafy greens), sweet, and salty tastes so that your palate vibrates with umami-satisfaction.