Kate Niederehe and Mike Niebuhr have both lived in Moab for over a decade, working various gigs in bike shops, for Canyonlands Field Institute, and Mike as a handyman. Their newest venture is making kimchi, which they made into an official business, Underground Kimchi, at the end of 2019. We sat down with Kate and Mike to get the story of their exciting new local business.
Kate and Mike were introduced to kimchi by a friend who brought them some to try. They were hooked immediately; they love spice and wanted something that supported gut health, but couldn’t really find any satisfactory kimchi locally. They decided to take matters into their own hands and began dabbling with creating their own kimchi.
With no prior experience, Mike and Kate purchased some ingredients from Carol’s Oriental Food and Gifts in Grand Junction. After they got to talking with Carol for a bit, she generously wrote down her family recipe for them. Using her recipe as a guide, Kate and Mike experimented for a few years until they had tweaked the flavor to their liking. Their recipe uses less fish sauce and gives the product a more spicy/veggie flavor than Carol’s.
They began selling their kimchi to friends out of their house for about a year before making their business official. One notable loyal customer is Orion Rogers, Moab’s Environmental Health Director. Now they use the Youth Garden Project’s commercial kitchen and Wild Bloom Fermentations’ space for fermenting their kimchi. They make about 4-5 batches of kimchi a year, each taking about 5 weeks to ferment. The small-scale nature of their production means that each batch might have slight variations in flavor due to availability of certain ingredients. For example, if they are unable to get the Korean peppers they use, they’ll substitute serrano or jalapeño peppers for them instead. Or, sometimes one batch of jalapeños will be spicier or one batch of carrots sweeter than another. But Mike affirms that despite slight variations in taste, each batch is always “consistently good.”
Recently, the pair finalized a vegan recipe, substituting nori for the fish sauce, which will be available soon. When asked about future plans, they noted that they’d like to make sauerkraut that includes more than just the traditional fermented cabbage, a beet kvass, and dilly beans. Kate and Mike have also been reaching out to local restaurants to see if they want to purchase their kimchi; La Sal House did (but has sadly recently closed up shop), and there may be potential to incorporate their kimchi into a few more restaurants’ menus.
We are currently selling Underground Kimchi in pint and quart (new!) jars in our dairy/refrigerated department. If you haven’t tried kimchi yet, now you have a chance to support a fledgling local business and enjoy this nutritious, versatile food that’s made right here in Moab! Kate and Mike enjoy kimchi on just about anything, but “eggs with a little avocado is a staple yummy ‘power breakfast’ for us.” It can be added to wraps or sandwiches with lunch meat, chicken, brats, kale salad, or any place you’d use tomato salsa (tacos, chips, etc.). Use it as a condiment to add a boost of flavor and probiotics or just snack on it straight out of the jar!
Here at Moonflower, we’re grateful and honored to be able to provide quality, local products such as Underground Kimchi. We are also proud to offer small local businesses a place in the market, which is typically difficult in the industrialized, global grocery industry. It is relationships such as these with local growers, producers, and artisans that strengthen our local economy and community resilience.