Sangchu Geotjeori - Korean Lettuce Salad - is a fresh leaf lettuce salad with sesame oil and soy sauce dressing. It’s served at many Korean BBQ /galbi restaurants. Because of its savory taste, the salad is very popular even among non-Koreans.

Here is a quick recipe for sangchu geotjeori - Korean Baby Lettuce Salad with sesame oil and soy sauce dressing.

Ingredients
1 head lettuce
1 green onion
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 or 2 tablespoons sugar or Korean melted syrup (mulyeot)
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/4 tablespoon Korean hot red pepper powder(gochugaru) or red pepper flakes
* The amount of each ingredient is subject to personal taste.

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Kimchi bokkeumbap (김치볶음밥) is one of the most popular Korean dishes, and it’s super easy and fast to make it. It’s also easy to create your own version of special kimchi bokkeumbap because you can add pretty much anything including various kinds of vegetables, meat, cheeses or seasonings.

* Bokkeumbap means fried rice and some of popular Bokkeumbaps are kimchi bokkeumbap, seawoo(shrimp) bokkeumbap, and heamul(seefood) bokkeumbap.

Many Koreans prefer to use over-ripened (well-fermented) kimchi when they make kimchi bokkeumbap because it generates much richer flavor than fresh kimchi. But it might be a little too sour or strong for non-Koreans, and you can try this dish with relatively fresh kimchi.

The best rice for kimchi bokkeumbap is Korean sticky rice, but long grain rice should work, too. To make this dish healthier, you can use brown rice or brown rice mixed with white rice. It looks prettier and certainly tastes more delicious if you cook kimchi bokkeumbap with white rice only, but I usually use brown rice mixed with white rice and beans just to feel better about my health.

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One day I was talking to my husband about how original my mom was in cooking. Unlike me who buys all basic Korean ingredients from grocery markets, my mom makes everything from scratch, including Korean bean paste, doenjang.

* Doenjang is a Korean fermented soy bean paste. Doeda means ‘to be thick’ and jang means paste in Korean. Its literal meaning is thick paste.

I saw so many times her making bean paste, hot pepper paste, soy sauce, etc from scratch while I grew up. And every single time, I got mesmerized how she could handle such complicated procedures. She’s a wonder woman to me!

I would never dare to make ferment soy bean paste(doenjang) myself. As much as I wish - because I know it’s healthier, I would cherish that memory in mind only and miss it from time to time.

Anyhow, since I surprised my husband by its complication of making soy bean paste in the traditional Korean way, I’d like to share it here.

How to make soybean paste, doenjang:

1. Buy soy beans, if possible in medium size. Beans get bigger and heavier when they are soaked with water. Mothers usually know how much they need it considering what size of crocks they have.

2. Clean the soy beans with water.

3. Soak the beans with water at 1:3 ratio for about 15 or 18 hours. It’s different by temperature and humidity.

4. Boil the beans, approximately an hour with high heat and keep it with low heat for about 2 hours. It can be cooked using pressure cooker. Some people steam the beans although it takes more time and efforts.

5. Crush boiled soy beans into little bits.

6. Form the crushed paste into square blocks, 7″ by 7″. The size can varry. These bean paste blocks are called meju.

7. Dry the paste blocks, meju on the floor for about a day.

– The procedure to dry the blocks vary household by household. The following procedure is more complicated. –

8. Hang them on the wall with hay strings. Dry them about about a week. Fermentation starts with Bacillus subtilis bacteria and some yeasts as the paste blocks are exposed to the air.

9. For the next three weeks, dry them outside with sun light during the day. At night, bring them inside. More fermentation is going on with somewhat unpleasant smell - ammonia.

10. Where it’s hooked with hay strings, there should be some white spores by the bacteria. This means they are being dried (fermented) properly.

11. For about the next two weeks, put them on ondol floor with more hay. Cover them up with cotton blankets. Turn over the sides of meju every three days.

*Ondol is a underfloor heating system shown in traditional Korean architecture.

12. Dry the bean paste blocks outside for about a week again. Bring them inside at night.

13. Clean the blocks with water and dry them again for about a week in the same way.

-Well-dryed Meju

14. Now it’s ready to put them in a big crock (opaque pottery jar).

15. Melt sea salt that has little bittern in the crock for three days. Proper salinity is about 17%. When you check the salty water three days later, some residue should be all on the bottom of the crock. You just use clean salty water.

16. Put the bean paste blocks in layers in another big crock. Add the salt water from 15, some dates, some hot peppers and more salts.

17. Put some hardwood charcoal. Now it’s being fermented more.

- Well Fermented Soybean Paste - Doenjang

The fermentation process produces many beneficial bacteria. The bean paste becomes rich in mineral vitamin, and essential amino acids. Linoleic acid and linolenic acid in doenjang affect normal growth of blood vessels, which can prevent many blood-vessel-related diseases. Polyphenol contained in Korean bean paste such as isojlavin or melanoidin makes doenjang a good anti-oxidant. Some studies show doenjang is anti-cancer.

During the fermentation in the crock, solids and liquids are separated. The solid portion becomes doenjang, Korean bean paste, and the liquid portion becomes ganjang, Korean soy sauce.

Whenever I read all those weird-sounding ingredients on the label of the factory made doenjang or ganjang from markets, I truly miss my mom’s hand made doenjang and gangjang that only contains natural ingredients. Maybe some day I will try to lean it from her!

- The most popular dish from doenjang - Doenjang JJigae

Tofu, soy bean curd, dubu in Korean, is a great source of protein. It’s also cholesterol free, low in saturated fat, and rich in minerals and vitamins such as iron, calcium, manganese, etc. With all these great nutrients, tofu has low calories compared with other protein food, and helps lower LDL (bad cholesterol) levels. It’s easy and cheap to buy as well. I’ve loved tofu, but now listing all these benefits, I love it so much more!

There are a few popular dishes with tofu in Korea such as tofu kimchi (dubu kimchi), tofu jorim (dubu jorim), soft tofu soup (sundubu), or soy bean paste soup (doenjang jjigae). I love all these, but two dishes that I usually cook at home are tofu jorim (dubu jorim) and soy bean paste soup (doenjang jjigae).

Here is a recipe for tofu jorim. It’s simple and easy.

Ingredients:
- 1 package of tofu: If possible, get firm tofu. Tofu is easy to break.
- Olive oil

Sauce (jorim sauce)
- Soy sauce (ganjang): 1/4 cup
- Minced garlic: 1 tsp
- Pepper powder (gochugaru): 1/4 tsp
- Sesame oil: 1 tsp
- Sugar: 1/2 tsp
- Sliced green onion (pa): 1~2 green onions
- Sesame seeds: 1/2 tsp
- Sliced green chili: 1 sliced green chill
- Water: equal amount of soy sauce or less

* The amount of each ingredient for the sauce is subject to personal taste. I prefer spicy, but less salty and less sweet, so I add more chili and more water.

- Green chill is not added to this sauce.

How to cook healthy soy-sauced boiled tofu, tofu jorim (dubu jorim)

1. Cut the tofu into slices.

2. Pat the tofu slices with paper towels to remove water.

3. Heat the pan over medium high heat and put some olive oil into the pan.

4. Pan fry the tofu slices both sides until they turn light yellow.

5. In a saucepan, add some jorim sauce (above) at the bottom. Heat the pan over low to medium heat. Put the first layer of cooked tofu. Add more jorim sauce on top of tofu. If needed, add the second layer of tofu and jorim sauce on top. If your pan is big enough, one layer will do.

6. Depending on how salty you want it to be, you can add more jorim sauce into the pan. With too much soy sauce, it looks dark. If color is as important as taste, add less jorim sauce and cook it less time.

7. It’s ready to serve when 80% to 85% of the jorim sauce simmers away.

Enjoy nutritious and tasty tofu jorim!

How Do I Cook Delicious Ramyun?

This question sounded strange to me first - how to cook delicious ramyun? To me, ramyun is tasty no matter what, and it’s very difficult to screw up with ramyun. You don’t need a lot of special skills to cook ramyun. To most Koreans, cooking ramyun is the easiest thing in the world.

But I realized that we could cook more delicious ramyun when I had ramyun in a restaurant specialized in ramyun only for the first time. Maybe ramen places had been popular in Japan much longer, but it’s been less than two decades since ramyun-specialized restaurants got popular in Korea, as far as I can remember.

The point is there ARE ways to cook more delicious ramyun!

Here are some tips about how to cook more tasty ramyun. I wasn’t initiated in the secrets from anybody in any way, so these are totally my ideas!

1. Add some more ingredients if possible.
There are tones of things that you can add to ramyun depending on your preference and imagination: mushrooms, potato, sausage, curry, milk, cheese, seafood, tuna from can, rice cakes, bean sprouts, garlics, spinach, hot pepper powder, vinegar, and so on.

The most common ingredients are eggs, dumplings, spring onions and kimchee. Obviously, these are additional ingredients, so pick whatever is available or whatever you’d like to. I usually add spring onions and eggs.

2. Get recently made ramyun if possible.
It’s said ramyun made within two weeks tastes the best because it absorbs water best. Unless you live in Korea, it’s very difficult to buy ramyun that recently made. But if possible, check the date when it’s made and get one made earlier. If you have ramyun that’s relatively old, it’s not a big deal as long as it’s within the expiration date. Just add more water when you cook old ramyun.

3. Turn the gas up to the highest and keep it like that while cooking ramyun.
The strength of heating power is very important. When you cook ramen, keep the gas at its highest. If you want to put the lid on after it’s boiled once, turn it down to the second highest. But it’s recommended not to put the lid on and keep the gas at its highest.

4. The amount of the water is important, too.
When I cook other Korean dishes, I usually use eye-ball measurements. But with ramyun, it’s a different story. Follow the directions of the package about the amount of the water, and it will make it more tasty.

Let’s cook delicious ramyun now!

This is for one serving.

(1) Boil 550ml water at the highest gas.

(2) Add the powder soup before the water boils. Stir it once or twice.

(3) When the water boils, put noodles in it. Once the noodles get loose, massage them by lifting with chopsticks a few times and stirring after. This will make the noodles more chewy.

(4) Boil the noodles for about 2.5 or 3.5 minutes without the lid on. This can vary depending on personal preferences. I like ramyun a little bit undercooked. But some people prefer to cook 4 minutes or more.

It’s said they cook for 2 or 3 minutes at a lot of ramyun restaurants. Another important thing is to keep the same heating power while boiling. Keep the gas at its highest!

(5) Egg! When and how to add an egg can vary as well depending on personal preferences. Some like to add it when they put the noodles and break it all the way. Others don’t want to break it to have a nicely-shaped yellow yolk.

If you like an undercooked egg, separate the white and yellow yolks, stir the white yolk and add it 2 or 3 minutes after you add the noodles. Then boil it whatever time you want. Add the yellow yolk at the end before you turn off the gas.

(6) Add some spring onions if you have 1 minute or 30 seconds before you turn off the gas.

(7) Serve it in a large bowl. Kimchi is the most recommended side dish for ramyun. Enjoy!

Other ingredients
You can add some red pepper powder (gochu-garu) for spicier taste.
You can add a drop of vinegar for more fresh taste.
You can add some milk for softer taste.

* Some of most popular ramyun in Korea
Shinramyun, Ansung Tangmyun, Neoguri, Kimchi Ramyun and so on