This adorable Google Doodle is an ode to kimchi
Eat a whole jar to yourself today, kimchi fiends.
It's "Kimchi Day" in Korea, so Google's published a Doodle dedicated to the ingredients that go into making the tangy fermented treat.
You can spot the essentials in the Doodle: cabbage, red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, green onion, carrot, radish, rice flour, and salt. They're ingredients you use to ferment kimchi in an onggi (clay pot). Of course, there are hundreds of regional recipes for kimchi, so this is just a general idea.
So what's "Kimchi Day?" According to Google, it's the day when salting kimchi helps the dish hit peak flavour potential, after you've pickled the cabbage, stuffed it with radish and chili powder, alongside ingredients like dropwort, mustard leaves or fermented shrimp, then stored to ferment.
In fact, the whole process of kimjang (kimchi curing) is dictated by the calendar, with huge amounts produced mainly in November and December, ready for you to put on your ramen, inside your grilled cheese, with your haemul pajeon, on your scrambled eggs.
Google went through a few Doodles before it decided on the final, adorable piece.
According to Google, the first references to kimchi in Korea occurred about 2,600 to 3,000 years ago.
You're meant to make it with your family, friends or neighbours, as a communal tradition. In fact, kimjang has been included by UNESCO in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which attempts to preserve country-specific cultural practices — Arabic coffee, Slovakian puppetry, Cuban Rumba, Portuguese cowbell manufacturing and Indian yoga are all on the list too.
Can't see it on your Google search? It's only appearing in parts of Asia and Europe, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.
Go on, celebrate "Kimchi Day" with a forkful of the good stuff.
Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.
