Korean cuisine
Korean cooking is built on fermentation: kimchi, gochujang and doenjang give a depth nothing else reaches.
Gochujang is not simply a hot sauce. It is a fermented paste of glutinous rice and chilli in which sweetness, salt and heat hold together; chilli mixed with sugar will not stand in for it, because what is missing is the fermentation.
The other thing that defines a Korean table is banchan: the small dishes that arrive at the same time as the main one. A meal is assembled from many flavours at once rather than served in courses.
2 dishes
- Bibimbap
Rice under separately cooked vegetables, meat and an egg, mixed with gochujang right before eating.
60 min · Medium · Main course
- Kimchi jjigae
A stew of over-fermented kimchi with pork and tofu. The older the kimchi, the better it works.
40 min · Easy · Soup