Stainless steel and salt

[kimchiguy]

I've discovered (after spending 40 bucks on a pretty nice bowl, ordered online) that I can't or shouldn't use stainless steel bowls when making kimchi. Well, I'll use stainless for some parts of the process, like for weighing the cabbage after I've cored it and cut it up, but I wont use it for soaking the salted cabbage because I've discovered the salt causes surface corrosion on even very good stainless. Brown spots, look just like the beginnings of rust. Affects my good knives as well. Can be removed fairly easily with a scrubbie and paste mag polish, available at auto parts stores (and wonderful for finishing an edge when you're sharpening knives, stropped on leather), but better to avoid it. So I'm working on collecting two or three very large bowls that are glass or ceramic. Also, if you go to thrift stores you may notice sometimes the glass carousels from old microwaves. They come in lots of different sizes and can be great for stuff like pressing the cabbage into the water when you're soaking salted cabbage for kimchi.

[Christopher Weeks]

We talked about Stainless fermenting over here quite a while ago : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21294

[kimchiguy]

Yes but did anyone discuss the effects of soaking salted cabbage, as opposed to fermenting, in stainless? My point is that prolonged exposure to something with a high salt concentration will cause surface corrosion in even good stainless stuff. I wasn't thrilled when I first noticed my bowls had several little brown spots. Lots of kimchi recipes call for heavily salting the cabbage and then covering it with water and soaking for 1 to 2 hrs or more, then rinsing before adding the rest. I have a big glass bowl that I use now. Heavy, but perfect size and shape for making more than a gallon. Anyway, sorry if this was covered elsewhere.

[Christopher Weeks]

(Just to be clear, I wasn't reprimanding you -- just trying to link up to an old conversation in case you, or future readers found it useful.)

[kimchiguy]

And I thank you! Didn't feel like a reprimand, just wanted to make clear the distinction between fermenting in stainless and soaking very salty stuff in stainless. I had to use a bit of elbow grease to get some of my knives and bowls looking nice again. Hoping maybe to spare others that experience.