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Vegetables from Korea, in Joseon-period cookbooks

Saengchi kimchi (pheasant kimchi, historical)생치김치

Saengchi kimchi is a historical kimchi of pheasant meat with cucumber or radish in a mild brine. In most Joseon recipes boiled pheasant is simply shredded into cold dongchimi, but the Eumsik dimibang ferments the pheasant with soaked cucumber pickle in warm salt water, like nabak kimchi. This is a text-only reconstruction.

Fully documentedVegetables

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHistorical recipe text with no amounts.
Pheasant, boiled plain and the fat removed[nfm-kkwong]
Oiji (salted cucumber), soaked out in water and cut to match the meatEumsik dimibang's fermented version[nfm-kkwong][pnu-kimchi]
Warm salt waterAs for nabak kimchi[nfm-kkwong][pnu-kimchi]
Cold dongchimi, for the unfermented version of Gyuhap chongseo and JuchanNoodles, radish, cucumber, pear, citron, pepper and pine nuts turn it into naengmyeon[nfm-kkwong]
Start
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What changes: The pheasant is boiled plain and the fat is skimmed away

Step 1 of 4
Boil the pheasant and remove the fat
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Leuconostoc
Lactobacillus
Weissella

Output: cooked pheasant meat.

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

Saengchi kimchi is a historical kimchi of pheasant meat with cucumber or radish in a mild brine. In most Joseon recipes boiled pheasant is simply shredded into cold dongchimi, but the Eumsik dimibang ferments the pheasant with soaked cucumber pickle in warm salt water, like nabak kimchi. This is a text-only reconstruction. Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus and Weissella, which dominated industrial napa-cabbage kimchi does most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

Saengchi kimchi puts meat into a water kimchi. Most Joseon versions are a cooked dish served in dongchimi, and only one ferments the meat in the brine.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Kkwong-jjanji and kkwong-ji (Eumsik dimibang)Pheasant and cucumber pickle stir-fried in soy sauce and oil and seasoned with chopi and pepper; not fermented.
  • Chijeo (雉葅, Suun japbang)Stir-fried cucumber added with the pheasant to its cooking water.
  • Dak kimchi (chicken kimchi)Modern-period cookbooks and newspapers use chicken in cucumber kkakdugi, dongchimi, yeolmu kimchi or whole-cabbage kimchi.

Safety

Kimchi can pick up pathogenic or spoilage bacteria if it is contaminated during preparation. South Korea's food-safety ministry sets limits for kimchi. Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and Vibrio parahaemolyticus must be absent from 25 g samples, and Bacillus cereus is capped at 10,000 CFU/g in fermented foods such as kimchi. This is general kimchi guidance; the sources for this page give no safety figures for it. The fermented route leaves cooked pheasant in warm salt water to ripen, and no source we read gives its salt, acid, time or temperature. CDC links cooked poultry and meat held between about 4 °C and 60 °C to Clostridium perfringens food poisoning. Treat that route as a historical record and do not follow it at home.

History and sources

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

Pheasant kimchi appears in Suun japbang, Eumsik dimibang, Juchan and Gyuhap chongseo. In the modern period chicken replaced pheasant.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [nfm-kkwong] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 꿩김치; KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  2. [pnu-kimchi] Pusan National University Kimchi Research Institute (부산대학교 김치연구소), 김치의 발달과정 (The development of kimchi), Kimchi stories section; read 2026-11web
  3. [kowiki] Korean Wikipedia, 김치 (종류 section; 생치김치 defined as dongchimi with shredded pheasant), read 2026-10wiki
  4. [shim2024] Shim Y., Lee J.Y., Jung J. 2024, Effects of kimchi-derived lactic acid bacteria on reducing biological hazards in kimchi, Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 34(12):2586-2595 (introduction cites the Korean ministry's microbial limits for kimchi)paper
  5. [jung2011] Jung J.Y., Lee S.H., Kim J.M., Park M.S., Bae J.-W., Hahn Y., Madsen E.L., Jeon C.O. 2011, Metagenomic analysis of kimchi, a traditional Korean fermented food, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 77(7):2264-2274 (industrial napa-cabbage kimchi, 29 days at 4 degrees C)paper
  6. [cdc-perfringens] CDC, About C. perfringens food poisoninggov
  7. [mfds-common] Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Korean Food Code (식품공전), 2. Common standards, 3. general standards, foodborne pathogen limits by food type (general kimchi limits, not specific to this dish)spec