Recipes By Eric Kim
207 recipes found
Beans and Greens Stew With Doenjang
In this deeply comforting stew, the hardest part is washing and chopping the greens, which is to say, not very hard. Earthy-sweet Swiss chard, especially rainbow chard, tastes beautiful here, but coarsely chopped spinach, kale, mustard or radish greens, napa cabbage or broccoli rabe would be lovely, too. Canned cannellini beans, crushed lightly with a wooden spoon, thicken the gentle, savory broth. The key to this dish lies in how you layer each ingredient into the pot: The onion and scallions are first browned to start an umami-rich base; the Korean fermented soybean paste, doenjang (see Tip), is bloomed in oil to awaken its deep, salty funkiness; and then the honey is caramelized slightly for sweetness and floral complexity. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Radicchio Caesar Salad
This fragrant take on Caesar salad uses up an entire tin of anchovies and replaces the sweet romaine with gloriously bitter radicchio. For the dressing: Though you could use a raw egg yolk and slowly stream in oil while whisking constantly, relying on the already emulsifying qualities of store-bought mayonnaise gets you to creamy heights with less fuss. This salad does not keep well, so serve it immediately, while the radicchio is still plump and crunchy. There’s no added salt in this recipe, as the many anchovies season both the bread crumbs and the dressing. But should your radicchio be especially bitter — pleasant though that flavor can be — feel free to add a pinch of salt to help tame the bitterness.
Tortizzas
Inspired by California Pizza Kitchen’s now-discontinued Greek pizza, as well as the Manhattan bar Our/New York’s also-discontinued tortilla pizzas (affectionately called “tortizzas” by the patrons who remember them), this quick lunch or light dinner builds on a sturdy base of crispy, cheesy flour tortillas. A fresh mix of cucumbers, tomatoes and avocado, mounded atop the tortillas, makes you feel like you’re eating a salad with your hands. Feta delivers sharpness and creaminess, as does the simple garlicky yogurt sauce that drapes each tortizza. A drizzle of honey at the end might sound out of place here, but it really brings together all the flavors, and is a popular dipping sauce for pizza in South Korea.
Tuna Mayo Rice Bowl
This homey dish takes comforting canned tuna to richer, silkier heights. Mayonnaise helps to hold the tuna together and toasted sesame oil lends incomparable nuttiness. You can adjust the seasonings to your taste: Use as much or as little soy sauce as you’d like for a savory accent. You can lean into the nuttiness of this rice bowl by sowing the top with toasted sesame seeds, or amp up the savoriness with furikake or scallions. A staple of home cooking in Hawaii and South Korea (where it is sometimes called deopbap), this simple meal is a workday workhorse.
Chickpea Salad With Gim
The salty, nutty and gloriously savory flavors of gim — the Korean roasted and seasoned seaweed — anchor this easy chickpea salad. Packed with umami, sheets of crisp gim are finely chopped into onyx-black confetti, speckling the sesame oil and mayonnaise-bound chickpeas. (Note that Japanese nori, the unseasoned sheets of seaweed used for sushi, are too dry and will not work in this recipe.) As it sits, the salad absorbs the dressing and the raw red onion mellows out beautifully, which means this is an ideal contender for making ahead and lugging to picnics whenever.
Frosted Sugar Cookies
In 1994, Lofthouse Cookies hit American grocery store shelves like a frosted meteorite. If you grew up in the suburbs, then you may have had one: soft, cakey, melt-in-your-mouth. Unlike their clamshell counterparts, which contain margarine, these homemade versions are made with butter and cream cheese, both of which add wonderful flavor that margarine alone does not. Be sure to freeze your dough for the full 15 to 20 minutes: Not only does this chill the fat, helping the cookies maintain their shape in the oven later, but it also allows the flour to hydrate and the flavors to concentrate. A relic of childhood shored into the present, these cookies are not unlike the tops of vanilla cupcakes, devoid at last of their dry, frosting-less bottoms. Freeze-dried raspberries lend a welcome tartness to the buttercream, not to mention a plush, candy-pink hue. (Watch Eric Kim make his Frosted Sugar Cookies here.)
Sticky Harissa Chicken Wings
This seemingly simple chicken wing recipe from Mansour Arem, a co-founder of Zwïta, a Tunisian food company, has genius moments throughout the cooking process, resulting in sticky, stellar results. Dry-roasting the wings ensures thin, crackly skin that’s at once crispy and airy under the spicy, sweet and immensely savory sauce, which requires no cooking, just stirring. Adding the hot wings to the cool sauce awakens the flavors of the harissa and lets it shine bright. This recipe calls for chicken, but the glossy sauce works well on many things, including salmon, tofu and chickpeas. Mr. Arem recommends enjoying this dish with beer, such as a pilsner, hefeweizen or amber lager.
Mashed Sweet Potatoes With Roasted Garlic
There’s no reason we can’t treat sweet potatoes like regular potatoes, meaning mashing them with butter, cream and lots of salt. Roasting sweet potatoes in the oven — individually wrapped in foil to help them steam — is not just a hands-off way to cook them by avoiding large pots of boiling water, it also concentrates their flavor. Roasted garlic is an easy addition here; since the potatoes already need an hour’s worth of oven time, the garlic can cook alongside. The mellowed, caramelized garlic cloves are then smashed into the silky spuds, creating a minimalist yet rich and savory side dish. Make this the night before and reheat it in a buttered casserole dish in the oven — or even in the microwave — with a couple of extra pats of butter on top, right before eating.
Green Bean, Artichoke and Radicchio Salad
Snappy cooked green beans make for a gorgeous salad with radicchio and canned artichokes. Beyond the vegetables, all you need for this refreshing zinger of a side dish is a generous glug of olive oil, a heavy hand with salt and pepper, and an electric spritz of lemon. A sprinkle of dried oregano on top lends bottled Italian dressing vibes, but with a homemade taste. This is an excellent addition to Thanksgiving, as it lets you feed two birds with one scone: You get a green bean moment and a salad moment all at once. To prepare this in advance, assemble everything through Step 2, keep it covered in the refrigerator, then on Thanksgiving Day, proceed with the dressing.
Long Island Iced Tea
As white light is the combination of all wavelengths of color visible to the human eye, so too is Long Island iced tea the rainbow of high-proof liquors mixed into a balanced cocktail. When done right, it’s surprisingly bright and refreshing. A prism of vodka, gin, rum, tequila and triple sec, this batch variation — ideally served in a pitcher — is a cooling blitz of a drink, reminiscent of the best parts of a whiskey sour, or a hot summer’s day. Fresh lemon and lime juice bring sourness and bitterness, and a splash of cola and a bit of maple syrup round things out. Two competing origin stories explain the Long Island iced tea’s name: one in Prohibition-era Long Island in Kingsport, Tennessee, where Charles Bishop is said to have created the drink with maple syrup in the 1920s; and the other in 1970s Long Island, New York, where the bartender Robert Butt mixed one up with triple sec at Oak Beach Inn.
Chicago-Style Hot Dogs
Often described as “dragged through the garden” — referring to all of the vegetable toppings — this hot dog is a joy to eat in honor of the Windy City. A proper Chicago dog is an all-beef frankfurter (such as Vienna Beef) in a poppy seed bun, topped with yellow mustard, neon-green sweet pickle relish, chopped white onion, tomato slices, a dill pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt. This stovetop recipe is very forgiving, and there are ways to adapt: No poppy seed buns? Just sprinkle a pinch of loose poppy seeds over regular hot dog buns slathered in melted butter. No neon-green sweet relish? Stir a drop or two of green food coloring into regular sweet relish. If you can’t find Chicago-style sport peppers, then sliced pepperoncini works in a pinch. Don’t skip the celery salt; its herbal lightness makes these dogs shine.
Sheet-Pan Shrimp Gratin
The best part of a gratin is the crispy crust, and, here in this shallow sheet-pan version, there’s more of it. Flaky panko bread crumbs — with a sprinkling of mozzarella and Gruyère — form a crisp, almost chiplike topping that tastes not unlike the edges of garlicky, cheesy Texas toast. In fact, the topping comes off in large, snackable pieces. As this bakes (for just 10 minutes!), the spice blend perfumes the kitchen, thanks to herbes de Provence. The shiitakes add earthy heft and incredible umami, but for a more delicately flavored gratin, you can leave them out. Serve this with a big green salad or eat it straight out of the pan.
Burger Plate
Inspired by German Hamburg steak and other patties of the world, including Danish frikadeller, Japanese hambagu and Korean hambak steak, this lunch-counter meal of ground beef is seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, nutmeg and grated onion. The rest is mere assembly, arraying fresh, crunchy accoutrements to accompany the tender burgers: Tomatoes lend juiciness, dill pickles provide zing and sweet raw onions cut through the richness of the meat. Though you could sandwich all of these ingredients between two slices of toasted bread, eating them as a casual plate lunch lets you appreciate each part separately. If you’d like, replace the ground beef with a plant-based ground meat substitute.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Reminiscent of Sara Lee’s loaves in the freezer aisle, this tender, buttery treat is like a pound cake in sheet cake form. For a Barbie-pink dream house finish, prepare this with the optional toppings: raspberry preserves, gently salted whipped cream and a snowy, psychedelic blanket of freeze-dried raspberries. Any toppings should be added right before serving, but if it’s simplicity you’re after, then you can skip them and dust the cake with confectioners’ sugar or nothing at all. The cake, undressed, will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 to 4 days or well-wrapped in the freezer for up to a month.
Maple Milk Bread
Inspired by the fluffy loaves at White Windmill, a bakery and cafe in Atlanta, this milk bread — a type of soft, bouncy white bread made with, yes, milk — is an homage to the Korean American community along the city’s Buford Highway and beyond. Milk bread exists across many cultures, but its distinguishing feature is the tangzhong — a cooked paste of flour and milk — that helps keep the bread from drying out. Maple syrup and a sturdier crumb distinguish this loaf from milk breads found at Asian bakeries. This one, which appears in “Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home,” by Eric Kim (Clarkson Potter, 2022), has a deeply savory, pancake-sweet flavor and tastes fabulous plain, fresh out of the oven, or toasted, buttered and adorned with jam; honey and flaky sea salt are equally welcome as toppings. (Watch the video of Eric Kim making maple milk bread here.)
Chocolate-Cherry Cake
Topped with a pompadour of airy whipped cream frosting — which tastes comfortingly of hot cocoa — this cake is reminiscent of Black Forest gâteau but with more chocolaty depth. The cake’s dark chocolate flavor is enhanced by Dutch-processed cocoa powder, which produces a much deeper, Oreo-like chocolaty taste than natural unsweetened cocoa powder. A glossy, cherry-red layer of preserves keeps the crumb moist and tender, and a splash of almond extract evokes the aromatic bittersweetness of kirsch or maraschino cherries (cherries are, after all, in the same family as almonds). Don’t forget the actual cherries on top; they’ll make you happy.
Shrimp Stew for Two
A stew should be as comforting to cook as it is to eat. In this effortless one-pot meal, a spicy, aromatic broth is tinged red with gochugaru, a Korean red-pepper powder. You want to use jumbo shrimp or prawns for this; be sure to get shell-on crustaceans (and head-on if you can), as they’re essential to flavoring this simple dish with their incredible nuttiness. Bitter greens and sweet radishes add vegetal heft as well as complexity to the broth, which you should definitely sop up with bread or rice. If seafood dishes like bouillabaisse, cioppino and maeuntang excite you, then this brothy wonder will delight and nourish.
Zucchini Panzanella
Zucchini shines in this take on panzanella, a Tuscan bread salad commonly featuring tomatoes. (Panzanella didn’t include tomatoes until the 16th century, and earlier versions featured onions as the main vegetable.) Here, scallions crisp up alongside the pan-fried croutons, which get a last-minute candying with maple syrup to provide extra crunch and insurance against sogginess. While the croutons are magnificent and dangerously snackable, the star of this salad is the zucchini. Cooked zucchini tastes wonderful, but the crunch of the raw vegetable in this recipe is stimulating and sweet, especially when doused with the punchy, garlicky dressing. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter .
Gochujang-Glazed Eggplant With Fried Scallions
Loosely inspired by the Korean banchan gaji bokkeum (stir-fried eggplant), this recipe keeps the eggplant in large pieces and sears it over high heat, yielding beautifully cooked flesh and still-violet skin. Though gaji bokkeum is traditionally soy sauce-based, my mother uses gochujang, the fermented Korean chile paste, for added sweetness and heat. The result is divine: As the sticky red sauce clings to the fried eggplant spears, it caramelizes in the heat of the pan and provides a glossy finish. The real star of this dish, though, is the scallion oil. The tangle of thinly sliced scallions crisps in olive oil, lending its oniony flavor to the oil, which is then used to cook the eggplant. This dish is salty, spicy and sweet — everything you want in a banchan — and tastes great with a bowl of fresh white rice.
Bulgogi Eggplant
Few things gain as much bulmat (“fire taste” in Korean) as eggplant. When thinly sliced like bulgogi, the classic Korean dish of grilled marinated meat, eggplants need only a brief flick of the fire — a minute or two per side — to cook through and char at the edges. (A very hot skillet on the stovetop works in a pinch.) Bulgogi means “fire meat,” so this vegetarian adaptation is inspired by the flavors of the beloved Korean barbecue staple — soy sauce, garlic and sugar — and would taste wonderful alongside a handsome plate of char-grilled beef bulgogi. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Baek Kimchi (White Kimchi)
More prominent in the northern parts of the Korean peninsula, baek (meaning “white”) kimchi is considered the predecessor to today’s more commonly known red, spicy napa cabbage kimchi. (Red chile peppers didn’t arrive in Korea until the late 16th century.) Without any chile, this kimchi lets the sweet, natural flavors of the cabbage shine, with a briny pickled taste that is salty, refreshing and full of zingy ginger. If your daikon doesn’t come with any greens on top, then one bunch of Tuscan kale is a good substitute that offers wonderful bitterness and balance; just add chopped large pieces during Step 1.
Creamy Asparagus Pasta
In this quick pasta dinner, umami-rich seaweed stars twice: first, in the form of dasima (dried kelp), which seasons the pasta water and sauce with seaside savor; second, as gim (roasted seaweed), which lends deep nuttiness and some salty crunch, too. The pasta finishes cooking in a blush of heavy cream and a splash of the dasima broth, transforming into a dreamy emulsion balanced by rice vinegar. In this recipe’s final moments, a rich glug of sesame oil glosses the chewy rigatoni and echoes the toasted flavor of the gim, which sings.
Kimchi
Sometimes called mak kimchi, this kimchi formula starts with chopped napa cabbage and is as easy as dressing a salad. You just toss everything together in a large bowl. Fish sauce anchors the kimchi sauce with incredible savoriness, while gochugaru, the Korean red-pepper powder, lends a deep crimson sheen and mild, fruity heat. Whatever chopped vegetables you add to the onion-garlic-ginger purée will lend their own natural sweetness as they ferment with the cabbage; scallions and daikon are the most traditional, but carrot works in a pinch and lends great color. We all need a good burp every now and then, so be sure to open the lid of your jar every couple of days to allow the gas from the fermentation process to escape. For the spice-averse, start with 1/4 cup of gochugaru, or turn to baek kimchi, which is a fragrant, chile-free version.
Pasta al Pomodoro
Pomodoro, the Italian word for tomato, comes from pomo d’oro (“golden apple”), and also refers to this sauce. A good pomodoro leans into the inherently savory, umami-rich flavor of the tomatoes, so use the best ones you can find. Any combination of low-water, high-flavor tomatoes like plum, grape, cherry and Campari, cooked down to their purest essence, makes for the most vibrant result. Thin spaghetti works best here, as its airy bounciness catches the pulpy tomato sauce beautifully, but regular spaghetti would taste great, too. Add basil at the end, if you’d like, or a dusting of cheese, but a stalwart pasta al pomodoro made with peak-season tomatoes needs neither.