While gaining in popularity, Korean food gets a bad rep. Some of the food is odd to American tastes, but a great deal of it uses ingredients we westerners eat regularly. A typical Korean meal often consists of rice, soup, kimchi or other fermented vegetable, a main course and several side dishes. As part of this month’s Food of the World challenge, we’re going to explore a couple South Korean recipes that can be made at home.
Korean Style Spinach
The first recipe is a Korean style spinach. It’s extremely simple. In fact, you’ve probably prepared spinach in a similar manner, just with different flavors. The recipe comes from the book Mashitta! A Collection of Simple South Korean Recipes
Ingredients
- 12 ounces fresh spinach, washed and trimmed from a bag or in a bunch
- 1 - 2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced fine
- 1 small onion, sliced into petals (about 1/2 cup) OR a couple green onions cut into bite sized pieces
- pinch red pepper flake optional
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- salt to taste
- sesame seeds for garnish
Instructions
- Saute the onion over medium heat in olive oil optionally seasoned with red pepper flake. Add the garlic when the onion has started to change color. Take care not to burn the garlic.
- Reduce the heat and add a large handful of spinach. Add more as the first bunch wilts.
- Continue until all the spinach had been cooked.
- Season with salt, soy sauce and sesame oil
- Garnish with sesame seeds before serving.
Next up, Cheesy Korean Corn Dip
The next side dish was one of my favorite things I’ve made this month. It’s called Korean Cheese Corn and it is very similar to the corn puddings I had growing up, but with cheese. Really, there’s much to like here. The original recipe called for almost a quarter cup of sugar which I omitted as I used sweet corn. (It does remind me of eating field corn as a child. It would be cooked in sugar water and slathered with butter…I don’t remember complaining).
We had it for dinner and I ate the leftovers on crackers. You’ll find the original recipe here on Zen Kimchi and my version below.
Ingredients
- 2 cups corn kernels I cut mine from the cob. Frozen or canned will work, too
- ¼ cup mayonnaise you can be generous
- ½ cup shredded cheese I used a pizza blend...add more if you want it really cheesy
- salt, pepper and fresh herbs to taste (I used dried thyme...cayenne or hot paprika would give a nice kick)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 and prep a 1 quart casserole with cooking spray or olive oil
- Mix everything together in a mixing bowl.
- Add more mayo if it seems dry.
- Transfer to a small casserole and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until bubbly (alternately, you could cook this in a skillet on top of the stove until warmed through and the cheese is melted)
Notes
As mentioned, I didn’t add any sugar to my Cheesy Corn Dip and it was plenty sweet. It was still too sweet for Rick’s tastes. My feelings weren’t hurt at all because it meant more for me!
We skipped the rice and soup for this meal. Some pickles would have been nice, and while neither one of us are big kimchi fans, we do appreciate the pickled carrots, radishes and other veggies often served in Asian restaurants. For the meat, I pan fried chicken nuggets and tossed them in this Korean style barbecue sauce.
More South Korean recipes to try:
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Oh em yum! The corn dip will definitely be making my table this week! A plus that I have all those ingredients on hand too. The spinach sounds interesting as well.
I’ve made it with the mexicorn, too. And tortilla chips… worth it 🙂
That corn dip sounds tasty! I like how it’s cheesy!
It was such a pleasant surprise. The sweet and cheesy went well together, too.
This looks super tasty! I’ll have to try this recipe out.
I love Korean food! It’s my favorite!
I really haven’t had much. I’m attracted to all the little side dishes.
This sounds delicious! I love trying recipes from other cultures.
Me too, that’s why I try to do The Food of the World challenge every month. Next month is Indonesia and I have an egg dish from Java picked out to try.
what a fab feast you put together here
Thanks, Mireille. It was a lot of fun searching for the recipes and pulling the menu together. The cheesy corn is the most fun thing I’ve made so far this month 🙂
I will check out the Korean cookbook and add it to my wish list. Love the spinach dish. I tend to neglect vegetables and never jazz them up. This looks like a pretty simple way to wake up spinach.