Tina Cho is the author of the 2024 middle grade graphic novel in verse The Other Side of Tomorrow, illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. She’s also a kindergarten teacher. Her new picture book The Kimchi Fridge, illustrated by Cindy Kang (Little Bee, Oct. 6), highlights how making kimchi together creates an opportunity for a family to bond over a shared cultural experience. Here, Cho reflects on the Korean dish’s meteoric rise in American markets, and her own complicated relationship with kimchi.

Have you ever had a love/hate relationship with a particular food? I have with cabbage kimchi, Korea’s traditional spicy red, fermented cabbage. Perhaps you’ve seen jars of it in stores. Now more than ever it can be found in most supermarkets and even health food stores. And I’m not even talking about international or Asian grocery stores. This past summer, kimchi had a moment on the Today show! Kimchi has gone global, and it’s even been to outer space! It’s also having a presence in children’s literature. So, what’s up with kimchi?

Kimchi is a probiotic. Cabbage goes through a brining and salting process, and the salt draws out the water and harmful bacteria, leaving behind a healthy lactic acid–producing bacteria that’s beneficial to your gut. Research studies mention health benefits of kimchi such as improving cholesterol, blood pressure, and fasting glucose levels and even boosting your immune system.

People in Korea three thousand years ago must’ve been doing something right. They fermented their vegetables, especially the cabbages, this way to preserve them through the cold winters as there were no refrigerators. Each region in Korea added its own special ingredients. Recipes have been handed down through the generations. Villages gathered together to ferment hundreds of heads of cabbages into kimchi, and buried them in clay pots in the ground so they could have vegetables that would last during the winter months. The tradition of togetherness to make kimchi is called kimjang. The recipes shared, the rich conversations, the laughter with family and friends, and resilient spirit were invaluable.

So back to my love/hate relationship with kimchi: When I married my kimchi-loving husband, I had to smell kimchi every day. I wasn’t fond of its pungent odor and would often burn a candle. When my mother-in-law flew from Korea to our home in the states, she even brought her homemade kimchi, which she had frozen! I also remember learning how to peel ginger at my first kimjang with a church group in California.

Fast forward several years. When my mother-in-law passed away, I helped unpack her kimchi fridge, with all her handmade kimchi goodness that she had made for her family. And when my husband and I and our two children moved to Korea, we had a built-in kimchi fridge in the wall that got plenty of use. Kimchi was everywhere and very convenient.

So, to my surprise, when we moved back to the states in 2020, I saw kimchi in regular grocery stores, even Target and Walmart! Many Americans crave healthier foods, cleaner foods, and plant-based foods. Not only that, the Korean wave had hit America. More Americans were watching K-dramas and listening to K-pop. Seeing kimchi and other delicious foods in these shows piqued curiosities. Today, in my suburb of Iowa, there are four Korean restaurants, but not that many Koreans.

In 2024, I attended my first SCBWI conference and met Brett Duquette, editor of Little Bee Books, and our conversation turned toward Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H-Mart, her memoir about her mother and her kimchi fridge. Since there were no picture books about this fridge, I said I would try to write one.

So, I embarked on creating a humorous, fun story that showcased Korean kimchi culture. Just like in making kimchi, good things take a while. I had to wait for the story to come to me. And it takes many people to make a lot of kimchi. It takes others to help you simmer, chop, mix, and ferment story ideas until you get the taste of the book just right.

The most meaningful part of the book came at the end—the recipe. Brett asked me for a kimchi recipe. I had never made kimchi by myself, and I didn’t have a family recipe. I searched online, and my husband tried to recall how his mother did it. After brining the cabbages and making the rice paste, my husband helped me get the spicy taste just right. It turned out delicious and tasted like home! Since then, I’ve made it four times. And I don’t burn candles anymore. Knowing how happy it makes my husband (and that it saves money), I will continue when I’m able.

Making traditional kimchi is not something you can do in an hour. It takes time to prep. It takes time for fermentation. In my book, The Kimchi Fridge, the main character Mina craves kimchi jjigae (stew), but there is no more kimchi in the fridge. So, the family has kimjang time. Not everything goes perfectly, but Mina learns that sometimes you have to wait for good things.

I hope this book touches readers’ hearts in that, even though they might not make kimchi, they see how loving hands created food for them, that sometimes you have to wait for the good things, and sometimes things do go wrong—like when you drop kimchi all over.