What is this thread all about?
Just a place for general discussion. A place to unload whats on your mind and talk about anything - personal, health, help needed, achievements, daily highs and daily lows, theories, predictions and what have you.
Does not need to be Q related.
I’m addicted to boneless Korean fried chicken.
This is correct practice. None can fault such a correct stance.
Ooh, you remind me, I just got a cookbook out of the library called "Korean American" by Eric Kim, and haven't looked at it yet.
Wanna come over? You’re making me hungry!
Hehe. Actually, the traditional Korean desserts are quite refined, subtle, and sweet. Minimal servings, to go along with the traditional Korean minimalist aesthetic.
Sikhye (식혜) for example. "Sweet rice punch"
Seongpyeon (송편) - one of the many types of rice cake.
Sujeonggwa (수정과): Cinnamon punch
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/829014243904836010/
Tonight, by daughter arrived home from an out-of-state trip, so I prepped up a bunch of 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal) and a full-on kimchi jiggae.
(For 7 years of my life, I ate nothing but Korean food, morning, noon and night, day in, day out. But that's another story.....)
Welcome to the party, RT.
I don't go in for the make-your-own basics level of cooking. Too much work! I'm the main meal provider in this house, and we got a bunch of humans eating it all. Although I love to pursue excellence and tend to approach my cooking from the viewpoint of a chef wanting the customer to have an inspiring and ecstatic experience, I don't really have the time or space to pursue cooking as a sort of a hobby.
I have made a few of my fav dishes from scratch, like kamja tang (potato soup) or ddeok mandu guk (rice cake & dumplings soup), by creating the broth from scratch, most of the time, I use the shortcuts of ready made bought dashida, etc.
That said, with ssamjang, I'd say its primarily a matter of focusing on your own liking. More salty, more spicy.... your choice.
That said, I'm a traditionalist, and I find it really hard to abide folks who make "kimchi" in their own image. To me, that's not kimchi. That's something inspired by kimchi but it ain't Korean cuisine, and it ain't kimchi. (I did a small kimchi workshop the other week for a few friends. LOL. I found out one of them cannot eat hot foods due to a health conditions and prescription by her Han yak (Chinese medicine) doc. So, she went ahead and used garlic and ginger, but basically no gochu karu!!! The purist in me had to grin and bear it.
I'll defer to your broader knowledge and experience with desserts. I mean, what do I know? I don't really do desserts. But, I have a strong nostalgia with the Korean desserts, because.... well, because. So, that's a bias I'm prepared to live with.
Lol... I too started off with heck "what is gochujang?" too!!! I like to cook as well. My favorite meal is "leftovers" "curry".... it starts out as Indian or Thai curry but the addition of gochujuang makes it amazing. I've tried making my own kimchi but didn't like it it, costcos's is way better.
I still make kimchi sometimes but I eat it fresh :)
Kimchi is not an easy beast to tame. Every batch of kimchi is liable to be slightly different, as the complexity of the ingredients (volumes, etc) makes a big difference. And, you really need to eat a lot of really good kimchi to truly know what's what.
But actually, there are dozens of different types of kimchi. What a lot of folks know as simply "kimchi" is in fact baechu kimchi, which is the most common and popular variety among the Koreans.
Love fresh kimchi. Love older kimchi. (When it's older, it's ideal of kimchi jiggae or even kimchi poggeum (fried kimchi).
Kek. Was about to link you to maangchi, as she has become my go-to source for legit recipe preparations. Her Tongbaechu-kimchi vid is the one I love the best.
Dunno about mak kimchi. As I wrote, I'm a kind of purist/traditionalist and I tend to go for the harder, more traditional variations. Don't recall doing mak kimchi all that well, or often.
I've been eating Korea food for about (gulp) more than 3 decades and cooking it for more than two. But I feel like I've only recently mastered the Kimchi beast, and all my dishes have jumped a few levels in the last 4 or 5 years, especially since I learned to follow other's recipes in certain cases, instead of winging it. (I first learned basically by attempting to recreate what I was eating.)
I think the key to making good kimchi is, as I've said, eating a lot of good kimchi. You have to develop that sense of what is what. I definitely think its something you cannot get simply by eating it a few times and then going, like, I'll replicate that via this recipe. But, maybe you can. Like I said, I'm a purist. And Korean food is pretty much a sort of spiritual exercise for me... Actually, most cooking is, come to think of it.