30 recipes. Page 2 of 2
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Thin-sliced pork belly fried until golden renders the fat that everything else cooks in. Onion, scallion and kimchi go into that fat, and the kimchi keeps frying until its juice has nearly gone, concentrating flavor and keeping the noodles from turning soggy. Older, more fermented kimchi gives a deeper sour note to the finished udon.
With Spam and Vienna sausages piled in by the handful, the salty, meaty side of budae jjigae leads. Well-aged kimchi cuts through the processed meat with its sourness, and a block of instant ramen soaks up the seasoned broth as it cooks.
Equal measures of soy sauce and vinegar give this Gangwon-style dressing its sour edge, with gochugaru for heat and a little sugar to round it off. Finely chopped kimchi clings to the noodles instead of sitting in clumps, adding fermented tang and crunch to every bite. With little gluten to hold them together, buckwheat noodles snap apart when boiled past the package time or pressed down while mixing. The dressing is folded in by lifting from below. Several rinses in cold water wash off the surface starch that would make the strands stick together. Water left on the rinsed noodles thins the dressing fast, which makes thorough draining as important as the chill.
This is the everyday pork belly and sour kimchi stew with one addition: a tablespoon of doenjang, fried briefly with the chili flakes before the water goes in. It gives the bottom of the broth a slightly earthier weight. If the kimchi is not sour yet, use half a teaspoon of sugar rather than a few drops of vinegar.
Rice cakes, kimchi, eggs and a slice of cheese turn two packs of instant ramen into a loaded snack-bar style bowl. Kimchi and cheese both bring salt, so the seasoning packet tastes stronger than usual if it all goes in at once. The noodles tend to finish before the eggs set, and lifting them out early saves them from going soft.
Kimchi, ham, and tofu, all common refrigerator staples, come together into something close to a pared-down budae jjigae. Frying the kimchi for 2 minutes first tames its sourness so it blends with the salty ham and the sweet heat of gochujang instead of competing.