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Vegetables from Korea

Kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi)깍두기

Korean radish is cut into cubes, salted briefly and coated in a paste of chilli powder, garlic, ginger and salted seafood. A few hours to a few days at room temperature start the lactic ferment, and it then ripens cold until sour and crunchy.

Fully documentedVegetables50 days – 53 days

Recipe

Kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: by milkchug (a flickr user), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceThe amounts are per 100 g of salted radish, from the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences standard recipe as used in a 2019 study, with the salt of the finished mix set at 2.5 %.
Salted radish cubes (2 cm)100 gSoaked 30 min in 10 % brine, rinsed three times, drained 3 h[jin2019kk]
Red pepper powder3 g[jin2019kk]
Garlic3 g[jin2019kk]
Ginger1.5 g[jin2019kk]
Sesame seed1 g[jin2019kk]
Sugar2 g[jin2019kk]
Glutinous rice paste5 g[jin2019kk]
Anchovy sauce (myeolchi-aekjeot)2 g[jin2019kk]
Salted shrimp (saeu-jeotgal)2 g[jin2019kk]
Starterspontaneous, as described for kimchi in general, which ferments through lactic acid bacteria naturally occurring in the raw materials (a review quoted by Maoloni 2020). The control groups of the 2019 study had no inoculum added.

Total time across the recorded steps: 50 days – 53 days

Start
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What changes: Korean radish is cut into cubes

Step 1 of 5
Cube the radish
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Leuconostoc
Weissella
Lactobacillus
Lactic acid bacteria

Smaller cubes soured faster in the first 5 days. Output: radish cubes.

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

Korean radish is cut into cubes, salted briefly and coated in a paste of chilli powder, garlic, ginger and salted seafood. A few hours to a few days at room temperature start the lactic ferment, and it then ripens cold until sour and crunchy. Made in 5 steps over 50 days – 53 days. The longest step, ripen cold, takes 50 days (Choi H.W 2023) and runs at 4 °C (Choi H.W 2023). Salt is 10 % (Jin Y.H 2019). Leuconostoc, Weissella and Lactobacillus, the main lactic bacteria and Levilactobacillus brevis, the main tyramine maker among the isolates do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step50 daysReported[choi2023kk]Ripen cold
Temperature4 °CReported[choi2023kk]Ripen cold
Salt10 %Reported[jin2019kk]Salt, rinse and drain
AciditypH 3.9–4.4Measured[jin2019kk]Ripen cold

What makes this one different

Kkakdugi is cut into cubes before salting. In a 2023 study, smaller cubes soured faster than larger ones in the first 5 days. Chonggak kimchi uses small ponytail radishes instead.

Related ferments

Variants

  • SeokbakjiRadish, cabbage and other vegetables cut and mixed together; early 20th-century cookbooks often mixed cabbage into kkakdugi too.
  • Seogeori-kkakdugiKkakdugi made with pollack gills, as it is called in Gangwon (Folk Encyclopedia).

Safety

Retail kkakdugi averaged pH 4.16. Some retail radish kimchi samples held histamine above the toxicity limit, much of it from anchovy sauce, and Levilactobacillus brevis was the main tyramine maker. Using less anchovy sauce, or a low-amine one, lowers biogenic amines.

History and sources

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

The Folk Encyclopedia traces radish kimchi salted and mixed with jeotgal back to the 18th-century Somun sasol, whose kkakdugi was cut radish and chilli powder mixed in strained shrimp jeotgal. The late-1800s Siuijeonseo gives a jeotmu recipe with shrimp jeotgal, chilli powder, spring onion and garlic. The name kkakdugi first appears in an 18th-century pansori, Chunhyangga. Sugar came into use in the 20th century to keep the crunch and take away the radish's bitterness, and radish-only kkakdugi became the standard side dish of the seolleongtang restaurants of early 20th-century Seoul.

  1. [jin2019kk] Jin Y.H., Lee J.H., Park Y.K., Lee J.H., Mah J.H. 2019, The occurrence of biogenic amines and determination of biogenic amine-producing lactic acid bacteria in Kkakdugi and Chonggak kimchi, Foods 8:73, doi:10.3390/foods8020073paper
  2. [choi2023kk] Choi H.W., Park S.E., Kim E.J. et al. 2023, Effects of ingredient size on microbial communities and metabolites of radish kimchi, Food Chem X 20:100950, doi:10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100950paper
  3. [nfm-kkakdugi] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 깍두기; KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  4. [nfm-seokbakji] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 섞박지; KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  5. [maoloni2020] Maoloni A., Ferrocino I., Milanović V. et al. 2020, The microbial diversity of non-Korean kimchi as revealed by viable counting and metataxonomic sequencing, Foods 9(11):1568, doi:10.3390/foods9111568 (discussion, quoting Chang's review of kimchi fermentation)paper