Kimchi Conflicts, Ep. 1-3: Arrival of Chili and the Survival of Older Tastes

This Is How "Our" Kimchi Is Supposed to Taste.

A Local Taste That Survived

In the previous posts, I introduced an ingredient in kimchi paste that puzzles many people: sanchogaru. It does not smell like it belongs in kimchi. It leaves a buzzing sensation on the tongue, as if someone were plucking tiny guitar strings inside your mouth. And, to be honest, it looks a bit like finely ground dirt.

Source: Mr. Hwi's Blog

It is a strange powder, one that seems to be familiar mainly to older generations in parts of South Korea. Yet it is an integral part of my family’s kimchi recipe (yes, the madam with rare personality is my grandmother).

In the Netherlands, I use Sichuan pepper powder as a substitute. In my family, this ingredient is called sanchogaru, the powder made from the fruit of the sancho tree. Through conversations with my mother and further research, however, we have begun to suspect that jepigaru might be the more accurate name, referring to a closely related local fruit called jepi. In fact, jepi is not even a standard Korean word. Strictly speaking, chopigaru would probably be the more appropriate term. Yet, until this little investigation comes to an end, I will stick with sanchogaru. It is the name I started and grew up with, and changing it now would feel like renaming the mystery halfway through the story.

Whatever the correct name may be, I was proud to include this mysterious powder in my kimchi.

When I tasted the paste and later the fermented kimchi, something clicked. I had finally found a flavor that I had grown up with but never consciously knew I was missing.

Its role is subtle yet unmistakable. It does not dominate. Instead, it seems to help the other flavors settle into place. It grounds them. It creates a delicate protective layer around the whole composition.

The feeling was almost cathartic.

I had spent some time doubting myself. Should I trust this unusual ingredient? Was I remembering it correctly? Was I simply imagining its importance?

In the end, I decided to trust the story, overcoming the sensorial uncertainty.

I put the powder in anyway.

And there it was.

The taste of home.

I cannot bring the landscape, climate, and community of my childhood to the Netherlands. But I can build something that carries a trace of them.

As I continued researching why this ingredient is rarely mentioned in mainstream kimchi recipes, I discovered that the practice is quite local. That realization left me wondering: if this flavor survives only in a few regions and in the memories of older generations, what happened to it elsewhere?

Did this curious, witchy powder lose the battle against more standardized versions of kimchi?

Did it simply survive in quieter places, hidden in family recipes like mine?

In short, the use of sanchogaru in kimchi may be older than the now-familiar practice of seasoning kimchi with red chili flakes.

Sanchogaru appears in historical records long before red chili came to define the flavor and appearance of most modern kimchi.

Accounts of earlier Korean pickling describe vegetables preserved with salt, vinegar, ginger, sancho, jepi fruit, and other aromatic seasonings rather than the bright red chili paste we associate with kimchi today.

One notable example appears in Suunjapbang, a cookbook written in the early sixteenth century during the Joseon Dynasty. Its recipe for cucumber kimchi includes sancho layered with cucumber and baekduong (the root of Pulsatilla koreana Nakai) during the summer months.

This is not necessarily the same powdered samchogaru that my family uses now. But it does show that the sancho powder belonged to at least some older kimchi worlds.

Original recipe of cucumber kimchi with sancho-garu in Suunjapbang. Source: Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal.

Then came red chili.

Today it feels inseparable from kimchi, but historically it was a newcomer.

Historical accounts generally place chili’s introduction to Korea and its expanding culinary use sometime after the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even after chili had entered Korea, many kimchi recipes still relied on salt, vinegar, brine, and spices such as sanchogaru or jepigaru, and even fennel. Only with Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje in 1766 do we clearly see red chili being introduced into kimchi recipes, including cucumber kimchi with chili powder and garlic.

Red chili did not enter an empty culinary landscape.

It entered a world that was already rich with pungent, fermented, salty, sour, and aromatic flavors.

Cucumber kimchi with red chili. Source: National Institute of Korean History.

One account explains that Koreans had already enjoyed strong, stimulating spices such as mustard, but pepper was expensive because it depended on imports. Kimchi made with spices such as ginger and sanchogaru may therefore have been associated with wealthier households.

Red chili offered something different.

It could be cultivated more widely and more affordably. As its use spread, it made intense spiciness accessible to many more people.

By the eighteenth century, red chili had clearly entered kimchimaking. By the early nineteenth century, Gyuhap Chongseo shows chili and fermented seafood emerging as major seasonings. Red chili became a powerful new member of the kimchi seasoning collective, joining garlic, ginger, green onion, salted seafood, fruit, and yes, our older spices including sanchogaru and jepigaru.

The story, however, is not one of replacement.

Gochugaru did not simply erase older sancho-like flavors.

Instead, it became dominant in many forms of kimchi while older tastes survived unevenly, quietly, and locally.

Regional kimchi traditions make this diversity visible.

Some use little or no chili at all.

Some rely more on brine, radish, mustard leaf, fermented seafood, garlic, ginger, pear, chestnut, or clear broth. Some are refreshing and pale. Others are dark, funky, fishy, sharp, or numbing.

The point is not that sanchogaru explains every non-red kimchi.

Nor that gochugaru explains every red one.

The point is that kimchi has never moved in just one sensory direction.

Baek-kimchi or white kimchi (백김치). Source: Korea Craft and Design Foundation.

So why does sanchogaru still survive in some kimchi jars?

Probably not because it acts as the secret engine of fermentation. Salt, vegetables, temperature, and time do that work.

But sanchogaru may contribute to something else.

It can soften fishy aromas, add a subtle citrus bitterness, create a gentle numbing sensation, and help strong fermented flavors feel cleaner or more balanced.

Yet its survival may not be entirely culinary.

It may also carry the comfort of place and family. The taste that tells someone, this is how our kimchi is supposed to be and taste.

In that sense, its survival is not only botanical or culinary.

It is sensory memory.

A local taste carried across generations, surviving quietly until someone recognizes it again.