Tag: Kimchi

Rice Bowl with Fried Eggs, Bacon, and Kimchi Mayo

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Rice Bowl with Eggs, Bacon and Kimchi Mayo

A quick, easy and delicious dinner or breakfast!
Print Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Breakfast, Main Course
Servings 2 people

Ingredients
  

  • 3/4 cups uncooked jasmine rice
  • water (to cook rice)
  • 4 eggs
  • 6 pieces bacon
  • 1/4 cup kimchi
  • 1/4 cup mayo
  • 2 cups fresh spinach (chopped)
  • 2 green onions (chopped)

Instructions
 

  • Cook rice (don't forget to rinse the rice first!)
  • Blend together kimchi and mayo in blender or small food processor until mostly smooth.
  • In a large pan, cook bacon. Set aside, and drain any excess fat.
  • Cook eggs in remaining bacon fat until preferred level of doneness.
  • Add some of the kimchi mayo to the bottom of two bowls. Split rice between bowls, add eggs, bacon and spinach. Top with green onion and remainder of kimchi mayo. Serve.
Keyword Bacon, Breakfast, Egg, Kimchi, Rice

And now for the details…

We just got back into Canada yesterday from Spain and are self-isolating for at least the next two weeks. It was pretty stressful getting home, as we tried to push our travel forward by a week and a half, with many of the flights getting booked up before we had a chance to secure our way back. We finally managed to book the flights, and we are super lucky to have an amazing support network here. A friend of ours dropped off groceries for us at the house before we got home so we are well stocked while we stay at home to eliminate any exposure to others. What to do while in quarantine for two weeks? Why not a 14 day challenge of one post every day using what we have in the freezer/pantry, plus the fresh veggies and fruits provided by our amazing friend!

This is the meal we had yesterday evening when we got home. Jet lagged and trying to come down from the stress of essentially fleeing for home, we wanted something fairly simple and quick, but also comforting. we happened to have bacon in the freezer, kimchi in the fridge, and rice in the pantry. Along with the fresh veg and eggs our friend brought us, this seemed like a pretty quick and easy meal to throw together while chilling with some TV and a glass of red wine to take off the edge.

Rice bowls seem to be trending right now, but my husband remembers eggs and rice being served to him for a quick meal frequently as a kid. So with what we had available to us, this recipe was born. After I made this dish, it was requested that this dish become our go-to for a quick meal going forward! In its creation, I may have been inspired by Empire Provision and would highly recommend you try out their “My Bowl’s Got Seoul” if you make it there for brunch.

Okay, let’s start cooking.

We start everything out, of course, with cooking the rice. I didn’t specify what kind of white rice here, but my personal preference is for jasmine rice. Completely up to you to take this extra step, but it has been ingrained into me by my husband: wash the rice!!! This means rinsing the rice in cold water until the water runs clear. This will avoid clumpy, gummy rice, and if you are a textural eater, it will enhance your eating experience 😉

While the rice is cooking, put the kimchi and mayo into a blender or small food processor and blend until mostly smooth. If you are willing to put in the extra time and get it super smooth, all the power you. I was tired and hangry and just wanted to eat, so mine was still a little lumpy, more the texture of a pesto than a mayo.

Next, take a large pan, and cook your bacon over medium-high heat. The flexibility of this dish is huge; the amounts and measurements in the recipe are completely guidelines and easy to modify. If you want more bacon, cook more bacon! If you want more eggs, cook more eggs! Feeding four people instead of two? Double the recipe!

Once the bacon is done, set it aside in a dish lined with paper towels. Drain most of the bacon grease out of the pan (why not drain it into a container and use it as a cooking fat alternative for future meals?), and add your eggs. We did ours sunny-side up with soft yolks (a runny, bright orange yolk over the rice? YASSSSSSS), but this is totally up to your preferences. Do I need to learn how to cook my eggs so they look prettier and not floating all over the pan? Maybe. But again: hangry.

While the bacon and eggs are cooking, loosely chop the spinach, and chop the green onions.

We plate this meal by placing some of the kimchi mayo on the bottom of our bowls. Next, add your rice (still hot!), and spread it out to become the base of your bowl. Spreading the rice out is so that everything goes on top and the rice becomes the delicious vehicle that everything else soaks into. Top the rice with the spinach, then add the eggs and bacon on top. Finish it off with a large dollop of the kimchi mayo, and a sprinkling of green onions, and dig in immediately!

Happy eating.

Pork Kimchi Stew (Kimchi Jjigae)

Kimchi Jjigae

A Korean stew made using Kimchi, pork belly and tofu
Print Recipe
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course, Soup

Ingredients
  

  • 700 g pork belly (1.5 lbs, cut in small slices)
  • 300 g kimchi (2/3 lbs, chopped loosely)
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 2 Tbsps soy sauce (dark)
  • 1 Tbsp mirin
  • 2 Tbsps gochujang
  • 3 cups chicken or pork broth
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 bunch green onions (cut into 1" pieces)
  • 1 package shimeji mushrooms (trimmed)
  • 1/2 package medium tofu (~170g, sliced)
  • 2 tsp butter

Instructions
 

  • Sauté the pork on medium-high heat until browned. Add the chopped kimchi, reserving the kimchi liquid, and stir regularly until kimchi is heated fully. Add the water and broth. Add the soy sauce, mirin,  gochujang, and kimchi liquid. Stir and cook until the stew starts to simmer. Stir in the shredded garlic. Add the mushroom and the green onions, stirring to mix. Lay the tofu across the top of the stew, spooning some of the stew over the tofu to coat. Cover the soup and cook for 5-10 minutes or until the mushrooms and tofu are cooked through. Spoon the stew into bowls and drop about 1 tsp of butter on the top of each bowl. Serve with a side bowl of cooked white rice.
Keyword Kimchi, Pork, Stew, Tofu

And now for the details…

I know what you must be thinking… ummm… Emily, I didn’t realize you were Korean…? No, no I am not. And what do I know about authentic Korean cooking? Not much at all, except that what Korean food I have eaten is delicious and I will do what I can to recreate it. Particularly this stew. This stew was love at first bite when I tried it at Ogam Chicken. It has all the things you could hope for in a stew. The flavour is a mouth-watering combination of salty, umami-rich, spicy, and tangy. With the little chunks of pork, kimchi, and tofu, this stew is also quite hearty. Pair it with a bowl of white rice and it is pure magic.

Eating kimchi jjigae in restaurants, you often get it served in a hot stone bowl called a dolsot. I do have a dolsot that I received as a gift. But alas, I still have not used it, as it does not work so well (i.e. at all) on an induction stove. I will need to get myself a hot plate to resolve this issue! Until then, a heavy bottomed pot will need to do the job.

Cooking with new ingredients is always both scary and exciting. There were a number of ingredients in this recipe that I had never used for cooking until I made this stew the first time.

Gochujang, which is a chilli paste, was a brand new ingredient for me the first time I made jjigae. I find it more earthy than spicy, although it definitely does provide some heat. It’s a deep, rich red and has an almost smoky yet sweet quality to it that really deepens the flavour of the dish.

Kimchi itself was something I had eaten on a number occasions, but had never cooked with at home. My favourite is baechu kimchi, which is made from the whole Napa cabbage. Luckily, it is usually the easiest to find in stores as well. Kimchi can be quite different brand-to-brand, and the store I get my ingredients from also does some fresh house-made kimchi as well. They will vary in the level of tartness, saltiness, and spiciness, which will change the way the stew ultimately tastes. Play around with the different kinds to find one you enjoy.

Let’s get to cooking.

Start by preparing your ingredients. Cut the green onions into 1″ pieces and set them aside. Take the kimchi out of its liquid, allowing most of the liquid to drain back into its container (set the liquid aside, we will be using that!), and chop the kimchi roughly to get some bite-sized pieced. Set the kimchi aside. Trim the mushrooms and set them aside. I use shimeji mushrooms because I enjoy them so much, but if you prefer white or brown button mushrooms, simply cut them into quarters or halves, depending on the size of the mushrooms (cut them into 1/8th’s if they are really big). Slice the tofu into 5-6mm (~1/4″) slices and set aside. Lastly, cut the pork belly into small, bite-sized slices.

We start by cooking the pork belly. Many recipes will call to add the pork belly to the broth once it is prepared, but I like cooking the pork first, getting a nice build up of the pork fat as it renders, and caramelizing the meat slightly. Add the pork belly to your pot with the heat set at medium-high. Sauté until the meat has cooked through almost completely and has started to brown. Stir this regularly, as I find the pork belly will try to stick to the bottom of the pot. If there is an large amount of fat pooling in the bottom of the pot, drain some, but keep the majority of the fat in the pot.

Once the pork belly is cooked through, add the kimchi to the pot, stirring regularly until any liquid that remained with the kimchi has cooked off and the kimchi is heated all the way through.

Next we start to add our liquid. Add the broth and the water, stirring while paying particular attention to the bottom of the pot to help stir in any of the caramelized pork that may have stuck to the bottom of the pot. Then, add the soy sauce, mirin and gochujang. Add a tablespoon or two of the kimchi liquid into the pot and allow everything to heat up until the stew starts to simmer.

Taste test the broth at this point to see if it is meeting your taste preference. Add more kimchi liquid if you want to increase the spiciness, saltiness and tartness of the broth. Now is also the point when you will add the shredded garlic to the stew. Lower the temperature to about medium or medium-low.

Next, add your mushrooms and green onions, and stir them into the broth. Then lay the tofu across the top, and spoon some of the broth over the tofu to coat it. I forgot to buy tofu the first time I made this for photos, so please excuse the, er, temporary costume (i.e. pot) change in this next photo.

Cover the pot an allow the stew to… well… stew… for about 8-10 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the tofu is heated through completely and everything is a nice, bubbly container of deliciousness.

Finally, we eat. Spoon the stew out into bowls, top with about 1 tsp of butter per bowl, and serve on its own or with a small bowl of cooked white rice.

Happy eating.