Kimchi, an ancient staple of Korean cuisine, is traditionally fermented in handmade earthenware jars called onggi. But when it comes to mass production, companies use jars made of glass and other materials to ferment kimchi in large quantities. Now a new study demonstrates why some kimchi makers still swear by the traditional technology: onggi provide great environments for the growth of lactic acid bacteria, the “good” microbes that give kimchi its signature sour flavor.
“Having higher bacterial proliferation is nutritionally beneficial and generates [the] unique taste of fermented food,” says Soohwan Kim, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student specializing in fluid mechanics and biophysics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. For a study published last month in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Kim and his colleague compared an onggi with a glass jar and found the ceramic vessel produces kimchi with higher levels of lactic acid bacteria over the same fermentation time period. “There is a cultural belief that onggi used in fermented food makes the food better, but there isn’t good science on it,” Kim says. His work aims to change that.
Creating delicious kimchi is an artistic, scientific and culinary endeavor in which the fermentation process is key. Because many different factors affect that process, kimchi and other fermented foods are finicky, notes Maria L. Marco, a food microbiologist at the University of California, Davis. “Even within one particular food [made] using the same ingredients and same recipe, how can there be different flavors and outcomes to that fermentation? That’s a big question we don’t have all the answers to right now,” says Marco, who wasn’t involved with the new study.
Source : Scientific American