What I Ate: Korean Food

I thought it would be fun to share a bunch of the dinners I've made over the past few weeks with my major Korean food shopping haul. Once a quarter, we hit up H-Mart and buy a massive amount of Korean food ingredients. For about three weeks after that major shopping event, we eat tons of really delicious (and slightly more complicated) Korean foods. I love it because it's all of the foods I grew up on and it makes me a bit nostalgic and also, it's the type of food that my stomach (and body in general) best tolerates.

We eat really well in our house. But, as much as I love to cook, I really only like cooking for my family because they're not allowed to complain. Also, I hate that feeling of making something and having my friends feel like they're being forced to eat it just because I put effort in and they're too shy and/or embarrassed to say they hate it. Oh the stress of first world problems!

MEAL 1

Right after we went Korean food shopping, I made a batch of cheese rabokki using fresh dduk. Seriously, nothing beats ddukbokki made with fresh dduk.

PREP WORK

When the weather gets chilly and Daylight Savings Time ends, I tend to do a lot of prep work on Sundays so that I can get dinner on the table a bit quicker during the week. It sucks to get home when it's already dark; it's depressing so having a few pre-made items ready for dinner always helps. On this particular sunday, I made a big batch of julienned radish kimchi and I marinated pork belly for jeyuk bokkeum and I marinated some kalbi.

MEAL 2
During the week, we ate a delicious crab jjigae with fish cake side dish and mung bean sprouts.

MEAL 3
Later in the week, I made bossam to go with the julienned radish kimchi I'd made on Sunday.

And I made some hobak jun.

MEAL 4
Coming home to seasoned pork is great because you can just chuck it in a pan and put on some rice and you're good to go.

We also took a little help from the store with a few store bought banchan. I also made some Korean-style broccolini and some spicy stir-fried oyster mushrooms.

MEAL 5
On the day I decided to cook the kalbi I'd marinated earlier, I made a big batch of soon tofu jjigae to accompany it because when the weather starts to get chilly, we shovel hot soup into our mouths to keep warm.

MEAL 6
One night I made a spicy version of chicken kalguksu. It ended up being almost overwhelmingly spicy, but it hit the spot.

MEAL 7
I found some kielbasa in the freezer so I defrosted it and made a modified version of omurice with a sunnyside up egg.

MEAL 8
I made seafood jeongol with monkfish and crab.

And I had marinated some sirloin steak tips in kalbi seasonings so I cooked some of that up too.

We didn't actually eat all of this food in one week. As much as I love Korean food, it gets a little tedious eating it every day. This is actually about two weeks worth of Korean meals. And honestly, I'm really hungry right now making this post.

I thought instead of a traditional "recipe round up" this would be a fun way to share some of my older recipe posts. I hope you liked it!

xoxo.