Varieties
Baek-kimchi
백김치
White kimchi made without chilli powder. The older form, and the gentlest way in.
- Main vegetable
- Napa cabbage
- Season
- Year round
- Chilli
- None at all
- Best at
- Ripe
Napa cabbage without a gram of chilli powder, dressed instead with slivers of jujube, Korean pear, chestnut and mushroom in a light brine.
Chilli only reached Korea in the seventeenth century. Everything before that was closer to this — which makes baek kimchi less a variation than a survivor.
It is also the answer to the most common question we get from readers who cannot take heat: yes, there is kimchi for you, and it is the older one.