Meet Master Kubonil: The artisan of Korean fermentation

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Transcript

00:00The history of Korea's fermentation is quite long, it dates back thousands of years, and

00:09among the three Asian countries, like South Korea, China, and Japan, South Korea has the

00:15longest history of fermentation as it is more than 3,000 years old.

00:20So the salt is very precious and very valuable, to the extent that a princess, when she got

00:27married, would bring soybean paste and soy sauce as an annual gift.

00:34And in addition to that, the mothers in South Korea, when maybe their son goes to mandatory

00:41military service or when there is an important event, they would pour water onto these earthenware

00:47jars and then pray.

00:49This shows how much important the sauce culture was here in South Korea.

00:59So she's been making this for over 20 years, but it has about 10 years when she went to

01:05the countryside to engage in business for the sauces.

01:10So as for the challenges that she's encountered while making the sauces and while doing the

01:15business was when she was conducting research, because she needed to study the literature

01:23and also research the literature to find out how the traditional Korean sauces and the

01:29Korean paste have been made, she went through a lot of trial and error, because a lot of

01:34the literature is quite vague in its wordings.

01:38For example, they would say you would put three portions of sweet potatoes and one portion

01:43of beans and it tastes good, but you wouldn't really be able to know the exact proportion

01:49and the ratio of the ingredients that is actually put into the sauce, and therefore, she needed

01:53to conduct a lot of research and try to find out the best ratio that brings out the best

01:58flavor of the sauces.

02:01The traditional Lee-Mae sauces use the three ingredients of water, salt, and haeju, which

02:08is fermented bean blocks, and this is fermented through time and nature.

02:14However, on the other hand, the sauces that is made in factories and just regular sauces

02:19that you would see in the market is done by just boiling the beans, and then they would

02:25put in the starter culture, also as to expedite the process of fermentation, and it would

02:34only take three to four days for the fermentation, and then the sauce will be ready in as little

02:41as three days and up to six months period only.

02:44And another stark difference between these two sauces is the addition of additives.

02:50In the traditional sauces, no additive is included except for the three main ingredients

02:55of the soybean block, the water, and salt.

03:00However, because the factory-made sauces needs to make the sauce in a very short period

03:06of time, it does not have enough time for the fermentation, and thereby does not produce

03:11a deep flavor, so they would include additives into the sauces to complement the shortage

03:18of flavor.

03:19So these days, the people are under a lot of pollution, and they're eating a lot of

03:28unhealthy food, like instant food, but the traditional sauces does not have any type

03:33of additives, and very healthy, and you're able to consume the sauce as is from the nature,

03:43and that is why it is very good for the health, as you can see, she's very healthy, although

03:48she's older, so with good food, you can become healthy.

03:53And because of a lot of the instant food these days, people's immune system seems to be

03:59collapsing, however, by consuming these kinds of natural food, like the traditional Korean

04:03sauces, you will also be able to strengthen your immune system as well.