My $80 wild garlic kimchi disaster that smelled like a gym sock

I got excited about wild garlic season back in April and foraged about 5 pounds of it near the creek behind my house. I figured I'd swap it into my go-to kimchi recipe instead of regular garlic and scallions. Three weeks later I opened the jar and it smelled like a wet wrestling mat mixed with old cheese, absolutely rank. I dumped the whole batch down the sink and lost about $80 in Napa cabbage, gochugaru, and fish sauce. Has anyone else tried foraging ingredients for ferments and had it go sideways on you?

2 comments

2 Comments

mitchell.mark1d ago

Five pounds? Man, what were you planning to do, open a wild garlic factory? That's a whole lot of faith to put in one creek. I've done the foraging swap thing before but always way smaller batches for that exact reason - you never know what's gonna happen. $80 is brutal though, especially the fish sauce, that stuff isn't cheap. I bet your drain smelled like a crime scene for a week after that.

markc841d ago

...but honestly, I think you might have saved yourself from something worse by dumping it. Wild garlic has a really short window where it's mild, and by mid April around here the bulbs start getting that weird sulfur punch. I tried a small batch once with just a pound mixed into a standard batch and it still turned funky after two weeks. The problem is regular kimchi has that fermented garlic note that builds slowly, but wild garlic is all upfront and aggressive. It pushes everything out of balance. You probably made the right call tossing it. That smell doesn't fade, it just gets stronger and more unpleasant.