Blooming Jangajji

Every once in awhile, I come across a recipe that is low effort, huge impact. In Minju Kang’s banchan cookbook I picked up in Seoul last year, she has pages and pages of delicious, inspiring, and seasonal side dishes to decorate your table with simple, nutritious, and delicious food.

When I saw her recipe for flower-like pickled Korean onions or jangajji, I knew I had to recreate it in my kitchen. Slightly different from the soy sauce-based jangajji you may have tried at your local Korean BBQ spot, these colorful pickles do not skimp on flavor. They’re sweet, so crunchy, and perfectly sour and could win the next vegetable beauty pageant. So go ahead! Have a stash of these easy pickles in your fridge for yourself but especially for when you have guests over — they can skip the bouquet of flowers and just bring wine. 😊

For the natural yellow dye, Koreans often use gardenia fruit or 치자 (chija). If you’ve ever eaten Korean pickled radish inside your favorite kimbap, if it’s high quality, it’s likely it was dyed using gardenia fruit. You can probably find these at your local H-Mart but I ordered high quality organic chija sourced from Korea on Amazon and highly recommend.

I also can’t recommend these vacuum sealed containers from Korea enough to store your pickled onions (and any other kimchi creations from your kitchen). It’s airtight and super high quality. Just be careful not to vacuum any liquid into the pump when you’re sealing your containers.

Blooming Onion Jangajji (1 jar)

Ingredients

• 3-4 onions
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups white distilled vinegar
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 TBSP salt
• Pinch of peppercorns
• For pink flowers, 1 medium beet, peeled sliced into half moons; for yellow flowers, 1/3 cup gardenia fruit

Prep onions. Peel onions and trim both ends. Cut onions halfway into eight wedges.

Make brine. In a large jar or tupperware container, combine water, vinegar, sugar, salt, peppercorns, and beet or gardenia fruit. Mix under sugar is dissolved.

Combine. Add onions to the container and leave at room temperature for 24 hours. After that, refrigerate and enjoy one by one, peeling back the layers to look like a flower and placing on a plate for your table. Enjoy!!