Steemit Iron Chef 2018 Act 01 Round 03 : Oi Sobagi (Cucumber Kimchi)

[clweeks]

Here it is, another week and time to enter the Steemit Iron-Chef challenge! This week, our theme ingredient is cucumber!

(As an aside, man do I love cucumbers -- Check out what I was doing last summer with cukes! That was one of my very first posts to Steemit.)

I do a lot of live-pickling, so a variation on Oi Sobagi seemed like a natural. I used: five lbs. of cucumbers, a bulb of garlic, a large onion, a couple of Anaheim chiles, a bunch of green onions, a few large fennel leaves, a heaping cup of gochugaru, half a cup of sugar, and some vegan fish sauce substitute. Most of the ingredients:

I started by cutting the cukes down into eighths and salting them pretty heavily to draw out water and get them crispy:

While that set, I chopped all the other ingredients pretty finely and combined them in a bowl:

I added a little water to help them homogenize as I mixed the ingredients up thoroughly. Once mixed, I drained the cukes and rinsed them to get rid of the salt, and mixed them up with all the other ingredients:

No, look closer -- isn't it pretty?!

And then I packed it in a jar that'll let gasses out but not in. (As the mixture ferments, it'll produce CO2 (and other minority gasses) and the pressure in the jar will increase, causing the gasses to hiss out through the gasket.)

Once allowed to ferment, the jar filled with brine (expressed from the produce) and I was able to pack some more into it for better, safer fermentation. I only gave it one day before plating some up, but it'll be better in two weeks -- more sour, but also crisper and savory and the flavors mix and melange.

To serve, I formed a circular cake of brown rice, laid two cucumber sections across the rice and another along-side, and spooned on a little of the non-cuke filler from the jar. Then I added a couple of chopped tomatoes, sprinkled on some diced chiles, and topped with mung-bean sprouts.

Comments

[pusteblume]

Cucumber kimchi! I love this idea! Now I am hungry for kimchi. I have to make some soon. I think I try zucchini ... 🤔

[progressivechef]

This is really pretty my friend...so mouthwatering! I am such a lover of spicy food btw!
Thanks a lot for the details on the Realsalt, I really learnt a lot thanks to the links you provided.

[haphazard-hstead]

That looks good! I like the bean sprouts with it, too. I like kimchi, but I have never tried making it. And, wow, that was a lot of cucumbers on your deck in your first post! What a first post! :D

[chefsteve]

This looks amazing. I love Korean pickles and your version is making me crave them. I have not made pickles like this yet. I have a few questions.

1. When you salted the cucumbers, it looked like there were some dark specks in the salt. Is that pepper?
2. I did not know that the gas would escape from a gasket. Is this method better than using an airlock?
3. After fermentation began you said that the jar filled with brine and you were able to "pack some more into it...". Do you mean you added additional brine? or you were able to get all the vegetables submerged?

Thanks for your help. I would like to get started making pickles like these. Good luck in SIC!

[clweeks]

1. I typically use RealSalt which has a bunch of minerals in it. That's what you're seeing. It's a super-raw salt dug out of the Utah desert. I like the nutritional philosophy behind it, but the truth is, it leaves a bunch of grit behind that doesn't dissolve, and sometimes that's not what you want. :-)
2. I do a whole lot of my fermenting in Fido brand jars by the Italian glass company Bormioli Rocco. They have a rubber gasket that acts very much like an airlock and are quite inexpensive. The metal wire that makes up the 'bail-top' mechanism does degrade over time -- gets sort of rough and corroded with washings, but I've been using them for something like seven years and none have actually failed yet, so it isn't too bad. I like the fact that I get the benefits of a water-based airlock, without the overhead space being taken up. That's useful on shelves or in the fridge.
   2a) There is also a whole slew of products that bring a gasket-style airlock to canning jars. I have one set of Easy Fermenter lids that work quite well, though I can't say for sure that they're better than any other similar product on the market. (A side benefit of these Easy Fermenters, is that the canning jars then stack, so if you're using the short-fat pint jars, you can pile them up on the shelves while your produce ages.
3. The batch of Oi Sobagi that I made was too large to all fit in that 3-liter jar when I was first packing it. So I left some in a tupperwareish thing. The next day, when I was plating up my entry, the cukes in the jar had all shrunk and produced a bunch of extra brine. So I plated the above dish from the plastic tub and then was able to shove all that was left into the jar, pressing down, which causes the brine level to rise and mix with the veggie-pepper paste, helping to preserve the fermenting produce and also spread flavors. I didn't add any extra brine. (Keeping fermenting produce covered in brine is one of the laws that many, many people follow dogmatically, but I've found in these gasket-topped jars, so long as I'm not opening and reclosing them, the headspace becomes all CO2 and prevents any pathogens from prospering -- so I'm not as anal about it as I am with an open-top ferment, which I also do.)

I can talk your ear off about fermenting! :P

[clweeks]

Further regarding the RealSalt -- in the image above, the salt looks a little pink. That's true color, not some image artifact. It's pinkish (like high-end Himalayan salt) with dark red flecks. Here's a breakdown of the mineral contents.

[chefsteve]

Wow, Great information. I learned a lot. I need to check out real salt, the fido jars, easy fermenter lids and the Himalayan salt. I appreciate the detailed answer. I am a detail person too. It is cool that you can talk forever about fermenting. I do the same thing with topics that I'm really into. Thanks again.

[pusteblume]

Tipuvote!

[sabuzkhan]

yummy food.it make me hungry.

[globaldoodlegems]

Very neat, I like the idea of fermenting them ... I just love Kimchi and this seems like a great variation on that !

[tipu]

Hi @clweeks! You have received 1.25 SBD @tipU upvote from @pusteblume :) tipuvote! - tell @tipU to upvote any post with a comment :)