Korean Food and Recipes
Korean tofu soybean paste soup (두부 된장찌개) is a common soup in Korea. If you cannot eat spicy food, you can skip the red pepper paste, the red pepper powder, and the hot peppers. If you are a vegetarian, use 4 shiitake mushrooms instead of 2, and skip the beef.
Yield: 2 Servings
Korean tofu soybean paste soup (두부 된장찌개) is a common soup in Korea. If you cannot eat spicy food, you can skip the red pepper paste, the red pepper powder, and the hot peppers. If you are a vegetarian, use 4 shiitake mushrooms instead of 2, and skip the beef.
Yield: 2 Servings
This is another one of my mom’s recipes. Yay! When my family lived in the peaceful country, because of my father’s job (teacher), my mom used to make a lunch box and deliver it to him at school. In the morning, I woke up with this awesome smell. “Wow, mom is cooking meat balls for dad’s lunch box. @.@” I sat next to her and enjoyed watching her cook. Of course, I could sample this delicious food before my father tried it. hehe … My father also loved this food. This was a good memory for me. Do you also have any special memories from your mom’s wonderful food?
Yield: 2 Dozen
Fish cakes are popular with children. The savory flavor of fish cakes, fried with a delicious sauce and veggies, makes a great side dish. Since this can be used for more than a week, and it tastes good cold, moms like to make plenty of it in advanced. Store it in the refrigerator and serve it with your meals.
Yield: 2 Cups
JangJoRim (장조림) is a Korean side dish using mainly beef and soy sauce. You can also use pork, chicken, or even mushrooms (vegetarians can skip the eggs too) instead of beef. Once you cook this, you can keep it in the refrigerator and serve it with other Korean side dishes for your meal. Usually we use quail’s eggs for this dish, but if you cannot find them in the store, like me, you can just use chicken eggs instead.
Yield: 2 Quarts
Korean people have been eating many different kinds of rice cakes as desserts or snacks for a long time. As Westerners eat cookies, pies, cakes, and candy, Koreans eat rice cakes, fruits, and other Korean desserts. Nowadays, Korean people also eat many Western desserts; so, Korean rice cakes are eaten less than before. However, Koreans still eat rice cakes on special days such as traditional holidays, birthdays, etc. Chapssaltteok (찹쌀떡) is a Korean dessert that is mainly made with sweet rice flour and red bean paste. It is almost similar to Japanese mocchi. It will be best to make your own red bean paste at home, but you can buy a can of red bean paste from the store. This time I just used red bean paste from a can. I hope you will like this chewy and sweet rice cake dessert.
Yield: 8 Pieces
Korean people have been eating many different kinds of rice cakes as desserts or snacks for a long time. As Westerners eat cookies, pies, cakes, and candy, Koreans eat rice cakes, fruits, and other Korean desserts. Nowadays, Korean people also eat many Western desserts; so, Korean rice cakes are eaten less than before. However, Koreans still eat rice cakes on special days such as traditional holidays, birthdays, etc. Chapssaltteok (찹쌀떡) is a Korean dessert that is mainly made with sweet rice flour and red bean paste. It is almost similar to Japanese mocchi. It will be best to make your own red bean paste at home, but you can buy a can of red bean paste from the store. This time I just used red bean paste from a can. I hope you will like this chewy and sweet rice cake dessert.
Yield: 8 Pieces
There are many different kinds of Korean jeon depending on what kind of vegetables, seafood, or meat you use. Hobak jeon is one of them. Hobak means zucchini and jeon means pancake. Jeon may be called a “pancake” in English, but the taste will be a little different from what you expect because it is not sweet. You can eat this as a snack or side dish. Try this simple and delicious dish someday. 😀
Yield: 2 Servings
The first time I made this food for my in laws in America, they called them “stuffed peppers,” and I found there are different kinds of stuffed peppers in America. The common American stuffed peppers are sweet peppers baked in the oven. Of course, the taste is different from these Korean stuffed peppers, but the idea of filling peppers with some ingredients and cooking them is the same. Anyway, I wanted to share Korean stuffed peppers with you. This is a holiday food, and it is one of my favorite foods. I learned how to make this from my mom. The marinated beef, hot pepper, and egg combination gives you a very tasty and happy flavor. We usually use less spicy peppers for this recipe because you don’t want the peppers to overpower the other flavors. If you can’t eat spicy food then I recommend that you use sweet peppers instead. I used both peppers in this recipe. You can eat this dish just plain or as a side dish.
Yield: 3 Servings
There are many kinds of dishes that use seaweed in Korea. This is one of them. The ingredients for this dish are very simple and the way of making it is very easy. Once you make this, you can keep it in the refrigerator and eat it anytime with rice. From Wikipedia, “Seaweed has several important biological activities or applications in biomedicine. Seaweed is also a known source of iodine, an element necessary for thyroid function with deficiencies leading to goitre. It has been asserted that seaweeds may have curative properties for tuberculosis, arthritis, colds and influenza, worm infestations and even tumors. A number of research studies have been conducted to investigate these claims and other effects of seaweed on human health…”
Yield: ½ Quart
