636 recipes. Page 1 of 27
Everyday Korean side dish recipes
Thick-walled and mild, asakigochu peppers need only 20 seconds in boiling water to lose their raw smell while keeping their crunch. The dressing is doenjang and gochujang with a little vinegar. Use cheongyang chilies in the same sauce and the dish turns much hotter.
Thin-sliced beef brisket goes into a dry pan first, and the fat it renders cooks the garlic, onion and zucchini. If the brisket gives off plenty, the cooking oil can be cut back. It is a side for rice, or spooned over a hot bowl of it as a quick rice bowl.
Pan-fried tofu and sour kimchi stir-fried with ground pork take turns on a skewer, turning the classic tofu-and-kimchi plate into something you hold in one hand. Leaving the tofu untouched until its underside sets gives it a crust strong enough to survive the skewer.
Gizzard shad are small enough to eat bones and all, and shallow scores along each fish do two jobs: they let the gochujang glaze reach the flesh and cut the fine pin bones so they are barely noticed. Syrup in the glaze caramelizes into a glossy amber coat, but it also burns quickly, which keeps the pan at medium the whole time.
The ingredient list is short enough to make this a handy way to use up brined cabbage left over at kimchi-making time. Each leaf gets a thin batter, just enough that the veins still show through, and the thick stem ends are pounded flat with the back of a knife. Cooked napa cabbage tastes noticeably sweeter than raw.
Finely chopped salted shrimp loosened in water seasons this zucchini side dish instead of soy sauce, a habit handed down from country tables where salted shrimp was the main seasoning. Cooking it covered over medium-low heat lands somewhere between steaming and braising, and the zucchini softens without going mushy.
Thick half-moons of Korean zucchini stay crisp in soy brine, with cheongyang chili building heat at the back of each bite. The brine goes in at a hard boil, which sets the outside of each slice while the center keeps its snap, and it is worth trimming out a large, watery seed core first. Whole garlic cloves lose their raw bite in the jar and turn mellow and sweet. It is edible after 24 hours and tastes more even around day three. This is a refrigerator pickle, not a shelf-stable preserve.
Beef and shiitake share one soy and garlic marinade and hit the pan together, letting the mushrooms soak up the meat juices instead of tasting like a separate vegetable. What sets this japchae apart is the last step: after everything is tossed in a bowl, it goes back into a hot pan just long enough to drive off loose seasoning. The noodles should end up clear and bouncy with no thin sauce pooling underneath. Sweet and salty japchae like this is a fixture of Chuseok, Seollal and birthday tables in Korea.
Korean diners of the 1970s and 80s served this sweet mayo macaroni next to pork cutlet and hamburg steak. Sugar and sweet corn take the place of mustard or herbs, and the macaroni is cooked softer than al dente so the mayonnaise clings in one creamy mass.
Crisp, honey-sweet chamoe (yellow Korean melon) and cucumber make a cold summer salad dressed with ground perilla seeds. The perilla powder thickens the lemon dressing and gives it a nutty, almost toasty depth, a flavor Koreans know from perilla noodle soups. Shredded perilla leaves go in last for a second, fresher layer of the same plant, and the melon tastes sweeter the colder it is.
Mallow usually ends up in doenjang soup in Korean kitchens; blanched and dressed instead, its soft leaves turn slippery and hold onto the fermented paste. Too long in the water and the mucilage loosens until the leaves clump into a slick mass, while too short leaves a grassy smell behind.
Canned tuna is already cooked, so the zucchini goes in first and the tuna joins only for the last 2 minutes. Added at the start, the tuna breaks into crumbs while the zucchini sheds a lot of water. Soup soy sauce and gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) go in sparingly, enough to tint the zucchini red without making any liquid.
Egg mixed with finely minced carrot, garlic chives and onion is poured in several rounds and rolled up, then cut into bite-size pieces for skewers, each face showing a vegetable-flecked spiral. Coarse vegetables thicken the layers and the roll loses its shape, which is why they are chopped as fine as possible.
Winter yellowtail carries a thick layer of fat under the skin, enough that coarse salt is the only seasoning it needs. That fat renders in the pan and crisps the skin, so the skin side gets most of the cooking time and the fish is turned just once.
Fine strands of beet and onion, held together by a light coat of potato starch and pancake mix, fry into a thin pancake where the red shreds stay visible. The beet's deep color makes browning hard to read, which sets it apart from other jeon. The cue for turning is the outer edge instead, where the wet batter should look dry.
Peeled quail eggs turn chestnut brown on the outside while the yolks stay bright yellow. Reducing the soy glaze all the way makes them too salty. Stop while a shallow pool of sauce remains. A sliced cheongyang chili, a sharp Korean green chili, adds a little heat at the end, and a night in the fridge lets the seasoning sink in further.
Twenty seconds in boiling water, then straight into ice water: that short blanch fixes the bright green and keeps a clean snap in every spear. Bending each stalk until it breaks on its own finds the point where the woody base ends, so nothing stringy ends up in the jar. Pickled in soy, brown rice vinegar and sugar, asparagus keeps a grassy, almost herbal note that radish or cabbage pickles never have. Thin lemon slices tucked between the spears add a citrus edge, though too much white pith turns the brine bitter. The aroma and acidity peak somewhere between days 2 and 5, and the sharpness works well beside rich grilled meat.
Shiitake carries the chew in this meatless japchae, cut into long thin strips alongside the onion and carrot. The seasoning is split: half dresses the sauteed vegetables, and the rest is stir-fried with the boiled noodles so they take on flavor of their own.
Cheongpomuk, a soft, translucent jelly made from mung bean starch, is cut into batons and tossed in chojang, Korean sweet-and-sour chili sauce. Crisp apple, cucumber, and red cabbage play against the jelly's smooth, bouncy texture, and the apple's sweetness rounds off the chili heat.
Perilla powder goes in last, after the boiled napa cabbage has been dressed with doenjang. It soaks up the water left on the leaves, so the seasoning clings to each strand instead of pooling in the bowl. One tablespoon is enough; more turns the dish pasty.
Ground perilla seeds thicken the small amount of cooking liquid into a light, nutty sauce, so the cabbage ends up sitting in a shallow gravy rather than dry or watery. Stems and leaves are cut together, yet a short covered cook leaves the stems with some crunch while the leaves turn soft.
Closely scored Vienna sausages, rolled on skewers in a pan, open out like butterfly wings as they heat, and the cut edges brown and crisp. Ketchup and mustard go on the side; thread rice cake between the sausages and you have sotteok sotteok.
The soy and honey glaze goes on in two rounds, so the bollak, a small Korean rockfish, comes out with a dark, glossy brown skin. The fish is lean and dries out quickly, so keep the grilling short.
Perilla seed powder has a heavier nuttiness than sesame with a slightly bitter finish, and in this jeon its aroma actually gets stronger once the pancake cools. Before they meet the batter, the oyster and shiitake mushrooms spend a minute in a dry pan to drive off their water. Soy sauce in the batter means it is seasoned enough to eat without a dipping sauce.