배추김치

When someone says kimchi without qualifying it, this is what they mean. Whole napa cabbages are split into quarters, salted until the leaves go limp enough to bend without snapping, rinsed, and then packed — leaf by leaf — with a paste of gochugaru, garlic, ginger, salted shrimp and radish.

The leaf-by-leaf packing is not ceremony. It is what lets the seasoning reach the pale inner ribs, which are the part that stays crisp longest and carries the sweetness. A quarter that has been coated only on the outside will taste hollow by week three.

Baechu is the variety most worth buying twice: once fresh from a shop with high turnover, and once left in your own fridge for a month. They are not the same food.