158 recipes. Page 3 of 7
Popular Korean street food recipes
Mozzarella is lined up in a single row down the middle before rolling, so every slice shows a white stripe at its center. Around it sit kimchi, stir-fried until no liquid is left in the pan, and yellow pickled radish. Sliced cheese, which melts easily, can stand in for the mozzarella.
The chicken breast is cut small, so each piece is mostly crust. After two rounds in the oil it gets a quick roll in a soy and oligosaccharide glaze, just enough for a sweet-salty coat without losing the crunch.
Half sheets of seaweed are spread with a very thin layer of rice and rolled tightly around just three fillings: yellow pickled radish, spinach, and carrot. The result is a slim roll that cuts into small coins, each one a single bite. Carrot is stir-fried only until it wilts so it keeps some crunch and sweetness, and the spinach is blanched briefly, squeezed dry, and dressed with sesame oil.
Instead of broth, these small boiled dumplings get a tangy dressing of soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil that clings to their thin wrappers. Mini dumplings tear easily, so the sauce is spooned on top and the dumplings are turned gently rather than tossed.
Each sheet of gim (roasted seaweed) is cut into four, and the rolls come out about the size of a finger, filled with little more than carrot, spinach and a strip of egg. The seasoning comes from a dip of mustard, soy sauce, vinegar and sugar, and the sharp kick of the mustard keeps hands reaching for one more.
Cocoa turns the batter dark brown in the mold, and a chocolate custard sits inside. Since the shell is dark from the start, its color says little about whether it is done. A skewer poked into the shell, away from the custard, settles it: no raw batter means it is ready.
The flying fish roe stays in the fridge until the moment of rolling; once it warms up, the skins slacken and the eggs stop popping. Inside there is only a thin line of mayonnaise and cucumber, and a little more roe goes on the cut faces.
Each loach is rolled in half a perilla leaf before frying, with a thin dusting of starch holding leaf and fish together. Most of the work is in the cleaning: salt draws out the slime, several rubs under cold water wash it away, and every bit of water has to be wiped off or the batter peels away.
Korean snack bars serve omelet rice in its plainest form: ketchup fried rice with ham, onion and carrot, wrapped in thin egg and topped with more ketchup. The ketchup and Worcestershire sauce bubble at the edge of the pan before being stirred into the rice. Turned out onto the plate, it takes the familiar oval shape.
A skewered sausage gets a log of chilled cream cheese pressed alongside, then batter and breadcrumbs before frying. The batter has to cover the cheese right to the ends, and frozen cream cheese runs even less. Under the crumb shell, the cheese melts and comes through with the sausage in each bite.
Large shrimp are split lengthwise before rolling, which packs the middle of every slice with pink shrimp. Egg strips, sauteed carrot and cucumber go in too, but nothing strongly seasoned, and it eats lighter than most gimbap.
The sweetness here comes from onion cooked slowly in butter, not from sugar, and cream and milk go in after it for the rice cakes to simmer in. With no gochujang or chili flakes at all, it tastes closer to a cream pasta than to red tteokbokki, and the parmesan stirred in at the end does the salting. The sauce thickens quickly as it cools.
The filling is just four things: beef marinated in soy and sugar and stir-fried, spinach, carrot and strips of thin omelet. The beef is sliced thin against the grain and cooked until the marinade clings with no liquid left, which keeps the rice dry and the cut slices clean.
Frozen dumplings go into the pan straight from the freezer. Once the water and lid go on, the browned bottoms soften for a while, and they crisp up again when the lid comes off and the water cooks away. Serve with soy sauce mixed with vinegar and chili flakes.
Tuna, rice, chopped pickled radish and cucumber are bound with gochujang mayonnaise and packed tight into seasoned tofu pouches, the kind used for inari sushi. More gochujang makes it hotter; more mayonnaise makes the filling softer.
Curry powder goes into the frying mix, so the batter is yellow before anything touches the oil, and it coats sweet potato, carrot and onion. With the spice already in the coating, no dipping sauce is needed. Carrot is the hardest of the three and gets sliced a little thinner.
Stir-fried kimchi is mixed into the tuna mayo, so each bite starts rich and creamy and finishes sour and bright. A layer of perilla leaves between the rice and the filling shows up as a green ring when the roll is sliced.
Breast or thigh both work, but thigh, with more fat, is the one that stays juicy over direct heat. The gochujang, soy and honey glaze goes on thin, two or three times, building up a sticky shine, and the skewers keep turning over medium heat because honey scorches fast.
Cutting each seaweed sheet in half makes rolls small enough to fit tuna mayo, pickled radish, carrot and spinach into a single bite. With only half a sheet to close around everything, the rice is spread thin and the fillings kept in a narrow line down the middle.
Part of the gochujang sauce is set aside the moment it is mixed. The rest marinates the chicken thigh, while the reserved portion never touches raw meat and goes on as a final glaze near the end of grilling. Each skewer holds two or three pieces of chicken for every piece of green onion, and they cook until the edges just char.
The spinach is dressed with sesame oil and salt, the carrot is cut into strips and sauteed, and the burdock is braised in soy sauce, then all three are rolled with pickled radish and thin egg strips. Each filling is seasoned on its own, so the colors stay separate and sharp when the roll is sliced.
Fatty chicken skin is fried twice until it snaps like a cracker. At 170°C the fat inside renders out; a short second dip in oil raised to 185°C sets the surface hard. Fried twice, the skin stays crisp for a good while even after it cools.
Chicken hearts are springy to bite and taste nuttier the longer you chew. Trimming off the vessels and soaking them in milk takes care of the organ smell. Three or four go on each skewer with a soy and gochujang glaze, and they come off the heat as soon as the cut center turns from pink to grey, before they toughen.
When baking soda hits the melted sugar, the caramel foams up and sets into a light, brittle honeycomb candy. Once the soda is added, there are only about 5 seconds of vigorous stirring before the foam starts to collapse.