I stumbled across Emily Kim's Korean cooking website a few months ago and fell totally head-over-heels in love. After mulling over her recipes for several days, I couldn't decide what to make so I made ELEVEN different dishes in one afternoon. (The photo below is of the produce from that one day's shopping excursion.) Everything turned out superb, very authentic, and delicious. I've never had much luck making Korean food but maangchi makes it easy with her written instructions, photos, and videos.
On a separate note, my kids are out of school for the summer. One of the responsibilities they assume when there is no school is to cook lunch and dinner when they are home with me. My 14-year old daughter enjoys cooking and loves to try new things. The other day we enjoyed breaded mahi mahi in browned butter and a lovely mesclun salad with grapes, feta and walnuts and a homemade raspberry vinaigrette.
My son, on the other hand, is a much more reluctant cook. He'll only make something if it is quick and easy. If the recipe begins with Campbell's condensed soup, all the better. I'm supervising his menu selections and am much more involved when he cooks.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone today - I told my son we would be making a Korean meal for dinner, one I could blog about. I decided to make Kalbi, Korean grilled ribs,
and I had my son make rice (in the rice cooker) and four different bahn chan (side dishes):
(The little red cubes are a type of kim chi made from radishes, called Kaktugi. That is also from maangchi.com but I made it a few weeks ago.)
Busy Mom Modifications and Tips
- Making four different dishes at once gave me a chance to teach my son about multi-tasking when cooking. We read over all four recipes and determined what order to work in. First we got the rice cooking and then steamed the eggplant. Next we cooked the radish and then steamed the bean sprouts. Seasoning and mixing everything was the final step.
- I'm not a fan of measuring ingredients when it comes to making bahn chan, although the measurements/amounts are provided for you. I prefer to taste and test as I go along and instructed my son to do the same. For example, he did not cook the radishes the extra 10 minutes as the recipe instructed. After a couple of minutes of stir-frying, he decided the texture was good and so we took them off the stove.
- The radish and cucumber (for the sprouts) were supposed to be cut into matchstick size. I'm wary of making the kids do too much cutting, especially when it calls for fine knife skills like julienne. I chose to use the shredder in the food processor instead. The shredded vegetables really are too small and thin for traditional Korean cooking but I'd rather have that than bloody fingers. Plus it's a lot faster, which is an important factor when you are working with a teenager who would rather be playing video games.
- I did not have the Korean pear called for in the ribs marinade so I left that out. Didn't miss it a bit.
- I buy Korean pickles at the grocery store, which saves me the trouble and time of pickling them myself. They tend to be very salty so as soon as I get them home, I dump out the brine that they come in and put the pickles in a jar of fresh water. I'll change the water once a week or so.
The Results
Everything turned out delicious. My son was pretty pleased with the results as well.
Ratings
- Difficulty: Everything was easy
- Time to prepare: The ribs had to soak for 20 minutes, the marinade took about 30 minutes, and grilling took about 45 minutes. The bahn chan took just over an hour, from start to finish for all four dishes.
- Prognosis: We'll definitely be doing this again!
My Shopping List
I had to buy the ribs and the produce (eggplant, bean sprouts, radish, pickles). I already had all the seasonings at home.
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