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Vegetables from Korea

Gul kimchi (oyster kimchi) and gul seokbakji굴김치

Gul kimchi is kimchi made with raw oysters. In the Joseon recipes, salted oysters, turnip and white green onion went into a jar with warm boiled brine and were eaten after one warm night. Later recipes mix salted cabbage or radish with chilli, garlic and ginger, and today it is made red with anchovy sauce and plenty of chilli powder and eaten young.

Fully documentedVegetables

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold and court recipes with no fixed batch size. The only ratio given is about two chillies to one bowl of oysters.
Fresh oystersWashed clean and salted in the Joseon recipes[nfm-gul]
Turnip and the white part of green onionCut into thin, fine slices and salted (Jeungbo sallim gyeongje and related books)[nfm-gul]
The salting brine, boiled and poured in while warm[nfm-gul]
Cabbage, radish, pear and minariIn 19th- and 20th-century recipes[nfm-gul]
Ground chilli or thread chillitwo or so chillies to one bowl of oystersKept light so the kimchi is not too red; no jeot in the older recipes[nfm-gul]
Anchovy sauce and plenty of chilli powderThe modern red style[nfm-gul]
Start
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Close-up: salt moving into a piece

What changes: Fresh oysters are washed clean and salted

Step 1 of 5
Wash and salt the oysters
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Gul kimchi is kimchi made with raw oysters. In the Joseon recipes, salted oysters, turnip and white green onion went into a jar with warm boiled brine and were eaten after one warm night. Later recipes mix salted cabbage or radish with chilli, garlic and ginger, and today it is made red with anchovy sauce and plenty of chilli powder and eaten young.

Key numbers
Temperature4–25 °CReported[shin2010]Keep cold once ripe

What makes this one different

In the Joseon recipes gul kimchi is eaten after one warm night. Recipes from the Joseon period to the colonial period used no jeot and only a little chilli, so they stayed pale, while today's are red with anchovy sauce and plenty of chilli powder.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Gul seokbakjiListed as a Chungcheong kimchi in a Korean Wikipedia list of regional kimchi.
  • Gul-kkakdugiCubed radish kimchi made with oysters.
  • Seokhwa japjeo (石花雜菹)Oyster kimchi served at the court in 1795; the record gives only the name.

Safety

Raw oysters can carry norovirus. In a model test, feline calicivirus stood in for norovirus, which cannot be cultured. Its infectivity fell by 2 log every 12 hours in over-ageing kimchi at 25 °C, reaching the limit of detection at 48 hours, and fell slowly at 4 °C. The authors credit mainly the ripening acids. The test did not measure norovirus, and this kimchi is eaten young, after one warm night in the Joseon recipes, so it does not show that ripening makes the raw oysters safe. CDC also says most people get vibriosis from raw or undercooked shellfish, particularly oysters. It lists liver disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV, thalassemia and immune-suppressing treatment as raising the risk.

Hazards the sources name: Norovirus carried by raw oysters (tested with feline calicivirus as a stand-in).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Joseon books give it as 石花沈菜 or 石花菹, among them Jeungbo sallim gyeongje, Gosa sibijip, Haedong nongseo and Siuijeonseo. The 1795 Wonhaeng eulmyo jeongni uigwe lists seokhwa japjeo at the royal table. Recipes appear again in 1924, 1938, 1942 and 1946 cookbooks.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
  1. [nfm-gul] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 굴김치; KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  2. [nfm-kimchi] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 김치 (regional kimchi); KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  3. [shin2010] Shin S.-B., Oh E.-G., Yu H.-S., Lee H.-J., Kim J.-H., Park K.-B.-W., Kwon J.-Y., Yun H.-D. and Son K.-T. 2010, Inactivation of a norovirus surrogate (feline calicivirus) during the ripening of oyster kimchi, Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 43(5), 415–420 (abstract)paper
  4. [KoWiki] Korean Wikipedia, 김치 (sections 역사, 종류, 지역별 김치; one-line definitions follow the Standard Korean Language Dictionary), read 2026-10-16: 굴김치 definition and Chungcheong listwiki
  5. [cdc-vibrio] US CDC, About Vibrio Infectiongov