"Korean" in quotes because, while I used ingredients from a Korean grocery, I have never had this dish in a Korean restaurant.
Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
1 small bellpepper
1/2 large onion
1 tablespoon canola oil
1+ tablespoons Korean pepper paste
2 cups of pickled kimchi cabbage with radish and onion
1 cup medium-grain rice (a compromise between traditional Korean "sticky rice" and long-grain rice, sorry, the "sticky" rice just doesn't work for me)
Assorted Korean side dishes (bean sprouts, pickled radish, fresh kimchi, etc.)
Put the rice on cooking in your rice cooker according to its directions.
Slice the breasts, bellpepper, and onion very thin. Heat up the canola oil and 1 tablespoon of Korean pepper paste in a wok. When hot, stir in the chicken. Stir in the onion, and stir chicken and onion until the chicken is done. Add the bellpepper and kimchi in, and stir for another five minutes or so until the big leaves in the kimchi is just starting to look a little limp. Turn off the heat, add additional Korean pepper paste to taste. (Note: I like spicy food, and one additional tablespoon wasn't quite enough, two was enough... but for most people here, it's spicy enough without any additional pepper paste). Serve over rice with side dishes, err, on the side.
Once again, this is NOT a Korean dish (as far as I know), this is just something I whipped up because I was bored with regular stir-fried chicken and have access to a Korean grocery with much weird looking stuff. Not being interested in squid (eeep!), I chose more normal Korean ingredients for my little stir-fry, which turned out interesting. I think I might just put a quarter of an onion next time though, because the kimchi that I bought has some onion in it, as does the Korean pepper paste, so there's a wee bit too much onion taste. But it's still yummy anyhow especially with the additional pepper paste (yeah!).
-- Badtux the Foodie Penguin
That's the awesome thing about stirfry... you can pretty much do whatever and it is still legit and tasty!
ReplyDeletePS, what brand "medium grain" do you use?
This is something called "Hinode Silver Pearl Medium Grain Rice" that is a local product (comes from a hundred miles north of here in the Central Valley) and is sold in the local Lucky supermarket. I looked at the various rices available at the Korean grocer, and decided I didn't like them. So I went across the street to the Lucky supermarket (which also has a lot of Korean clientelle) and got this rice.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the stirfry was quite legit and tasty! Finished it up today (made it yesterday). I still have the fixings for another batch. I think I'll make up another batch tomorrow, but making pepper oil out of crushed red pepper for stir-frying the chicken rather than the Korean pepper paste, and only a quarter onion. Still some Korean pepper paste stirred in at the end though, it adds a unique Korean flavor to the proceedings.
- Badtux the Experimenting Penguin
Groovy Badtux:
ReplyDeleteIf you dig shopping at your local Korean market, you are officially righteous in the book of Monkeys.
We had Pho that I made with ingredients from our local Korean place for the past two nights. The recipe makes a ton and it tastes even better the second day.
Did you do a "Cindy McCain" and boost the recipe from Rachel Ray? :)
ReplyDeleteI love it when you post recipes. Yummy!
ReplyDeleteDave
Sounds quite good. Do two tablespoons of the pepper paste make it crazy hot, or hot enough to be interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, will I regret going with two instead of one?
sounds good. i'm not a recipe user for stir fry either. i can get some decent chinese ingredients from mexicali. they have a huge chinatown down there. not so much korean but all that stuff looks pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteTo make it Korean, add a few drops of sesame oil and then stir in massive amounts of ground up red pepper. The latter instantly transforms all cuisine into Korean food.
ReplyDeleteI think itaipu didn't get enough hot pepper on his plate. Pass him many hot peppers, quick!
ReplyDeleteUhm, Korean food is *not* just lots of ground hot pepper. Although I must admit that it's a big part of Korean cuisine. You also need other spices, like garlic and onion. And the red pepper paste that I mention, which is an important part of Korean stir-fry, is more than just red pepper, it has other seasonings in it too. Which you might not taste if you're not Korean or Cajun, but they're there!
ReplyDeleteAs for Itaipu, anybody who posts "George W. Bush was selected by God" on this blog obviously is in the wrong place, so I sent him on his way :-).
- Badtux the Cajun Penguin
Okay, I experimented today. The Korean pepper paste is best put in *last* because it is a thickener. It turns the juices from the kimchi into a nice spicy sauce. So instead of pepper paste at the beginning, first I saute'ed a teaspoon of crushed red pepper and a quarter onion until the onion was nicely transparent, then tossed in the chicken. Then once that was done (you can tell because it stops flopping around like raw chicken and starts being stiff), I tossed in the bellpepper, stirred some more because my bellpepper was kinda thick, then tossed in the kimchi. Once the kimchi gave up its water and there was liquid at the bottom and the kimchi looked like it was starting to get just a little past the crisp stage and droop a little, I put in about THREE tablespoons of the pepper paste, which thickened up the sauce just fine when I stirred it in and the thicker sauce coated everything, and then I turned off the heat and, after stirring a while to let the heavy Korean wok cool down a bit (Korean woks are heavier steel than Chinese woks and hold heat longer), served over rice.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was *GOOD*. But probably you want to stick to two tablespoons of the pepper paste unless you are Korean or Cajun. It wasn't hot hot hot, I didn't break a sweat or anything, but someone from Kansas might have broke a sweat.
And that concludes this experiment, since I'm out of ingredients. I still have a little onion and bellpepper left, but I'll probably toss them into a more conventional Chinese stir-fry rather than trek all the way to Lawrence and El Camino Real. Or maybe I'll go over to the Indian grocer that just opened up in the strip mall down the street and see what they have...
- Badtux the Gustatory Penguin
I've always wanted to try those big containers of red pepper paste from the Korean market.
ReplyDeleteI did make Kung Pao Chicken tonight using "bird pepper and dried chiles" that I bought in a Bangkok supermarket. Super spicy hot, but delicious.
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ReplyDeleteIt's always an adventure to try new stuff at the Asian grocery. Half the fun is trying to understand the translation, if there is one on the package.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and I've come to prefer brown rice, which takes the same amount of time to cook in a rice cooker. It's higher in B vitamins and has much more fiber, and it tastes great with just furikake on it.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe Kim-chee in your case?