Side dishes Recipes

Seasoned Korean Wild Lettuce

Godeulppaegi is one of the more bitter Korean greens, and most of the prep time goes into soaking it in cold water after blanching. If a taste says it's still too sharp, change the water and soak it again, then dress it with gochujang and vinegar.

Prep 50min Cook 7min 4 servings

Stir-fry Easy

Korean Spicy Gochujang Dried Squid Stir-Fry

Mayonnaise stirred in after the heat is off keeps the dried squid strands soft and moist even once the dish cools. The pan comes off the heat as soon as the strands start to clump together, since a sauce cooked any longer scorches and turns bitter.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🏠 Everyday

Prep 8min Cook 7min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 25min 2 servings

Braised Live Blue Crab in Soybean Paste

Once the shells go red and the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) broth has worked its way into every crack, the crab meat gets picked out and eaten over rice. The radish lining the bottom of the pot soaks up the crab too, so it is worth fishing out alongside.

Kimchi Easy

Korean Zucchini Kimchi (Summer Fresh Gochugaru Quick)

Korean zucchini holds so much water that it keeps weeping after it is seasoned, and a pool of liquid gathers at the bottom of the container within a day. This kimchi is therefore made to be eaten fresh, within two days, rather than left to ferment. Salting stops at 15 minutes for the same reason: any longer and the slices give up too much moisture and turn soft instead of crisp. Plum syrup stands in for sugar, and garlic chives add a green, grassy note against the chili.

Prep 22min Cook 5min 2 servings

Side dishes Hard

Korean Mackerel Sashimi

The slices go on a bed of onion and minari (water dropwort), with chojang, soy sauce, wasabi, and lemon kept on the side for dipping piece by piece, each one differently. The fillet has to be sold for raw eating with a stated parasite-control freeze, and even then it stays at 4°C or below while it is prepared.

Prep 25min Cook 5min 2 servings

Stir-fry Medium

Korean Stir-Fried Sweet Potato Stems

Peeling is most of the work here: the thin outer skin has to come off the whole length of each stem, because leftover fibers stay stringy no matter how long they cook. Peeled and blanched, the sweet potato stems turn a clear olive green, and ground perilla seed added at the end thickens the little pan liquid into a nutty, clinging coat. The last step stays brief because that coating sticks to the pan quickly.

Prep 45min Cook 10min 4 servings

Steamed Easy

Korean Braised Dried Pollock and Potatoes

Dried pollock strips turn pleasantly chewy as they absorb a soy and gochugaru glaze, while the potatoes go soft and floury around them. That chewiness depends on a short soak: five minutes in lukewarm water is enough, and anything longer leaves the fish limp and stringy in the pan. The potatoes get a head start for the same reason, so the pollock only needs a few minutes in the sauce. A little oligosaccharide syrup rounds off the saltiness, and the dish holds up well in the fridge for the next day's lunchbox.

🍱 Lunchbox

Prep 15min Cook 28min 2 servings

Kimchi Easy

Korean Red Cabbage Kimchi

Red cabbage leaves are thicker and denser than napa and stay crunchy after salting, though salting them longer only makes them tough. During about 12 hours in the fridge the cabbage bleeds its purple into the chili paste, and the kimchi comes out a deep violet rather than the usual red.

Prep 30min 0 2 servings

Korean Seasoned Thistle Greens

Gondeure, a thistle-family mountain green from the Jeongseon and Taebaek highlands of Gangwon Province, is better known as the base of gondeure-bap, a rice dish cooked with the greens. Dressed with perilla oil, soy sauce, and garlic, it has a soft herbal scent close to mugwort along with an earthy, forest-floor note. Squeeze the boiled greens gently and leave them slightly moist, and chop the tougher stems finer than the leaves so every bite chews the same.

Prep 10min Cook 8min 4 servings

Stir-fry Medium

Korean Gondre Dubu Doenjang Bokkeum (Thistle Tofu Doenjang Stir-fry)

The doenjang is thinned with three tablespoons of water before it goes in, because boiled gondre (a wild mountain green) comes in tangled strands. Thinned paste can work its way between them. Tofu, browned separately in perilla oil, joins at the end.

Prep 18min Cook 10min 2 servings

Steamed Easy

Braised Dried Pollock (Hwangtae-po Jorim)

On drying racks in Gangwon-do, pollock freezes and thaws dozens of times over the winter to become hwangtae, and the flesh ends up full of sponge-like pores. Braised in soy sauce with gochujang, it takes the salty-sweet seasoning in through those pores, all the way to the middle rather than just on the surface.

Prep 10min Cook 12min 4 servings

Kimchi Hard

Authentic Jeolla-style Kimchi

Two fermented fish products go into this southern Korean kimchi, anchovy fish sauce and salted yellow croaker, layered for a saltier, deeper flavor than most napa kimchi. Finely chopped sea staghorn, a branching seaweed, adds a cool, briny savoriness that grows as the kimchi ripens. The chili flakes soak in glutinous rice paste first, which brightens the color and helps the paste cling to each leaf. The seasoning goes in generously, as is typical of Jeolla kimchi, and the heads are pressed down hard in the container because air contact gives fermenting kimchi a stale smell.

Prep 50min Cook 40min 4 servings

Korean Seasoned Bracken Fern

Bibimbap rarely goes without it and ancestral rite tables almost always include it, so bracken namul tends to be made in large holiday batches and eaten over several days. Records of eating it go back to the Three Kingdoms period, and the traditional cooking fat is perilla oil, not sesame. It tastes fine straight from the fridge.

Prep 15min Cook 15min 4 servings

Stir-fry Hard

Korean Thistle Greens & Mackerel Stir-fry

Oily mackerel and boiled gondre, a rustic, grassy Korean thistle green, share one gochujang and soy glaze. The mackerel is pan-browned separately and added near the end, so it is still in large flakes on the plate.

Prep 20min Cook 14min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 25min 4 servings

Korean Braised Gizzard Shad

Gizzard shad, a small fish at its fattiest in autumn, stays moist even when braised in a soy and gochugaru sauce. Three deep scores along the back let the sauce reach the thick part of the fish without a long cook. Thick slices of radish packed across the bottom of the pot keep the fish from scorching and turn sweet as they soak up the sauce; the thicker the slices, the sweeter they get. Basting with a spoon takes the place of flipping, which would break the delicate flesh apart. The reduced sauce left in the pot is spooned over steamed rice.

Kimchi Medium

Jeolla-style Green Onion Kimchi

Instead of salt, this Jeolla version seasons the scallions with thick fermented anchovy sauce, myeolchi jinjeot, which gives them a funky, deep saltiness. The sauce goes only on the white stalks at first, since they are thick and need a head start, and whatever drains off is stirred back into the chili paste rather than thrown away. Pear juice sweetens the paste in place of sugar for a cleaner finish. The green tops get only a light swipe of seasoning, because squeezing them makes the kimchi taste grassy.

Prep 30min Cook 20min 4 servings

Korean Fernbrake Namul with Doenjang

Cooked with doenjang instead of soy sauce, bracken picks up a deeper fermented smell and a heavier taste that stands up to its bitterness. The paste is loosened in water before it goes in, which keeps it from catching on the bottom of the pan as it simmers.

Prep 15min Cook 12min 4 servings

Stir-fry Medium

Korean Stir-fried Bracken Fern

Bracken fern is first coated in perilla oil and then simmered briefly in soy-seasoned water, so it ends up tender and seasoned all the way through. That second stage is closer to braising than frying, and stopping while a little liquid remains keeps the ferns moist. Use bracken that has already been soaked and boiled; dried or raw fern should not go straight into this pan. Splitting the thick stems by hand evens out the seasoning.

Prep 12min Cook 10min 2 servings

Prep 15min Cook 25min 2 servings

Korean Steamed Yellow Croaker

Yellow croaker has fine, tender flesh that separates into neat flakes under chopsticks, and the soy sauce seasoning seeps along deep scores in its sides. The fish stays put in the steamer from start to finish, and the few spoonfuls of liquid left underneath are poured back over it to eat with rice.

Kimchi Medium

Korean Scallion Kimchi (Whole Stalk Anchovy Shrimp Paste)

Salted shrimp and anchovy fish sauce layer two kinds of seafood savoriness, and glutinous rice paste thickens the seasoning so it clings to the scallions even after they release water. Six hours at room temperature plus a day of chilling make it ready for grilled pork belly or bossam, and after three days or more its lactic sourness suits stews and stir-fries.

Prep 25min 0 4 servings

Gwamegi Wraps (Semi-Dried Pacific Saury Ssam)

Gwamegi is Pacific saury, or traditionally herring, half-dried by freezing and thawing repeatedly in cold sea wind on Korea's southeast coast. It is eaten without cooking, so buying and storage matter more than technique. Choose a refrigerated product, put it in the fridge as soon as you get home, and prepare only what you will eat that day; seal and freeze the rest. Most gwamegi is now sold half-trimmed, already split into two fillets with the skin on. Lift the skin at the end where the head was and pull toward the tail, and it comes off in one piece. The fish is rich and oily, so it is wrapped in plain napa cabbage or laver with raw garlic, scallion and green chili, and dipped in vinegary chogochujang to cut the fat.

Prep 25min 0 3 servings

Stir-fry Easy

Korean Oyster Water Parsley Stir-fry

Briny fresh oysters go into the pan with minari (Korean water parsley), a strongly grassy herb, and are stir-fried with chili flakes and soup soy sauce for a little heat. The oysters are barely cooked, so they stay plump.

Prep 15min Cook 8min 2 servings