Recipes By Eric Kim
207 recipes found
Yum Yum Sauce
This mayonnaise-based Japanese steakhouse sauce tastes glorious with grilled shrimp, chicken and vegetables, or drizzled over a plate of fried rice. Slather it on a burger, use it as a dipping sauce for fried tofu, French fries and pizza crusts, or even as a salad dressing for crunchy iceberg, romaine or Little Gem lettuce. An all-purpose sauce for everyday pleasure, yum yum sauce should taste balanced with savoriness, sweetness and a touch of acid and gosoham, the Korean word often used to describe the nuttiness of sesame oil. Remember to salt generously so all the flavors can shine.
Pan-Seared Radicchio With Soft Cheese
Is there a vegetable more perfectly sized for two people than a single head of radicchio? Not much bigger than a softball and wonderfully bitter, radicchio tastes otherworldly when seared briefly in a skillet, gaining a roasted kale-like savoriness while maintaining most of its crunch. A funky, strong-flavored soft cheese like Camembert or taleggio melts gloriously in the hot pan and, with a bit of sherry vinegar and honey, creates a makeshift dressing. This easy but luxurious recipe proves that you don’t need much for a stellar appetizer: just a pan, a few ingredients and a hunk of crusty bread to sop up the salty, bittersweet juices.
Chicken and Orzo With Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Vinaigrette
A sun-dried tomato vinaigrette uses both the tomatoes and the aromatic oil in which they are stored for a deeply savory pasta meal. The vinaigrette serves double duty here as both a marinade for the tender chicken thigh morsels and a sauce for the orzo and feta. This dish tastes lovely warm, right off the heat, but it also makes for a wonderful cold lunch, like something you might find at an Italian American deli or salad bar.
Baek Kimchi Jjigae (White Kimchi Stew)
This burbling kimchi jjigae is an everyday comfort, with its deep savoriness and gingery bite. In this variation using baek kimchi (white kimchi), the same warmth of other jjigaes is evoked even without red chiles, and lets you taste the cabbage more fully, especially once it’s cooked down to a tenderness that’s almost spoonable. A hunk of braised pork is always a good idea, especially when braised in the salty, savory and gingery aromas of fermented napa cabbage kimchi. In this stew, the kimchi does most of the heavy lifting, but depending on how flavorful your batch is, you can season to taste at the end with additional fish sauce. Don’t skip the white rice; it’s the soft, familiar foil against the zingy stew.
Pan-Seared Chicken Thighs With Parsley and Lemon
This recipe will make you think, “Oh, that’s what parsley tastes like.” Bright and herbaceous, one bunch of flat-leaf parsley does a lot of work in this relaxed chicken dinner. First, the tough stems are puréed in a bold and garlicky buttermilk marinade that tenderizes boneless, skinless thighs, then the leaves and their tender stems are sautéed like spinach and spritzed with fresh lemon. Serve these juicy chicken thighs with rice, beans, bread or generously buttered noodles.
Jalapeño Jangjorim With Jammy Eggs
Jangjorim is a Korean dish of soy sauce-braised meat, often studded with pulled eye of round (sometimes sold as “jangjorim meat” at Korean grocery stores), hard-boiled eggs and wrinkly kkwarigochu (shishito peppers), which are mild enough to eat whole. This version, inspired by my mother’s recipe, uses eggs that are just boiled enough that they’ll peel easily and the yolks will remain fudgy. In place of the shishitos are fat, juicy jalapeños, adding a welcome freshness and fruity heat. And the beef is brisket, shredded into long, pleasurably chewy strands, which soak up the umami-rich soy sauce brine. As a banchan, this dish is an ideal accompaniment to a bowl of fresh white rice. Any leftover sauce you might have is a large part of the joy of making jangjorim: It tastes fabulous when soaked into rice with a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, or as a sweet, saline base for soba noodles.
Seolleongtang
Seolleongtang (SULL-lung-tahng), also known as ox bone soup, is a deeply comforting dish seemingly magicked out of just bones, sometimes a small hunk of meat, and scallions, if you have them. This version is especially pared down, relying mostly on the bones, which are boiled over multiple hours to imbue the broth with fatty redolence. The best seolleongtang is made from reused bones kept specifically for this dish, which is why batches made with fresh bones may not have the quintessential milky whiteness characteristic to this dish. The broth is seasoned with a quick, gremolata-like mix of scallion, garlic and sea salt.
Fennel ‘Quick Kimchi’
This is not a traditional kimchi, but it approximates the flavor profile, bypassing a lengthier fermentation and instead relying on vinegar. In Korea, this dish would be considered a muchim, which can refer to any number of “seasoned” or “dressed” salads or other preparations. That also means you can eat it right away, though this fennel kimchi will keep up to two or three days before losing its crunch. Admittedly, fennel is not a traditional ingredient in kimchi, but its gentle aniseed flavor provides a clean landing pad for the spicy dressing, which leans on pantry stalwarts like gochugaru, sesame oil and fish sauce. Enjoy this as a hearty salad alongside fish, pork chops or any main dish that could use a fresh accompaniment. For a vegetarian option, you can swap out the fish sauce for soy sauce.
Rhubarb Sauce
This jewel-bright rhubarb sauce has as many uses as a Swiss Army knife. Glossy and sweet-tart, it tastes fabulous in iced coffee, cocktails and other mixed drinks, and is especially welcome over vanilla ice cream. The optional vanilla bean adds musky warmth that extract does not, so skip it completely — don’t substitute — if not using. With this recipe, you get two goodies: the sauce of course, and the strained fruit that remains, which is great draped over yogurt in the morning or spread onto a slice of buttered toast.
Wasabi-Soy Vinaigrette
This all-purpose salad vinaigrette is reminiscent of the wasabi-tinged soy sauce you might have with a California roll. Soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil waltz in time, while the wasabi paste adds nose-clearing excitement. As with any recipe, feel free to adjust the ingredient amounts to your taste preferences, especially the wasabi, which can be scaled down or up. Be sure to shake if it’s been sitting in the fridge, as it wants to separate.
Tongdak Gui (Whole Roasted Chicken)
This recipe draws inspiration from the old-fashioned rotisserie chickens sold along Seoul’s streets in the 1970s — before Korean fried chicken entered the scene in the next decade. Cornish game hens are an excellent substitute for the smaller, younger birds often used in South Korea for this succulent poultry dish. A simple soy-sauce brine, made even more fragrant with ground white pepper, ensures inimitably juicy, tender meat that, after roasting in the oven for an hour, truly falls off the bone. A nod to pa dak (“scallion chicken”), an early-2000s trend in which shaved scallions were served atop fried chicken to cut the fattiness, this recipe calls for lightly dressed scallions for a verdant counterpoint.
Cheesy Cabbage Tteokbokki
A dish of royalty, tteokbokki consists of chewy Korean rice cakes (tteok) that are stir-fried (bokki) and slicked in a savory-sweet sauce. Sometimes the sauce is soy-sauce-based, as the kings of the Joseon dynasty enjoyed in the royal court dish gungjung tteokbokki. But more commonly today, as it is here, the sauce is gloriously red, spicy and gochujang-based. Traditional versions might include fish cakes and whole hard-boiled eggs, but this one leans into a base of butter-fried shallots and a layer of melted cheese covered in a crunchy blanket of raw cabbage. A parade of halved, molten-centered soft-boiled eggs bedecks the top.
Miyeok Guk (Seaweed Soup)
People eat miyeok guk on birthdays to celebrate not just their own birth, but their mother’s sacrifice as well — which is why it is often known as birthday soup. This miyeok guk (ME-yuhk gewk) forgoes the more common beef broth for mussels and an aromatic base of onion, garlic and anchovies. Though not traditional, the addition of parsnip, for sweetness and umami, yields a broth with body, like the kind you would get with the usual brisket. Scooped out of their shells, mussels become little morsels in the soup, nuggets of briny joy.
Iced Einspänner
Einspänner, in German, is either a one-horse carriage or a hot espresso topped with cool whipped cream. The temperature contrast in the Viennese coffeehouse classic is a delight, to be sure, but this iced variation tastes refreshing in warm weather. It’s sweet, bitter and a little savory all at once, like a tiramisù in beverage form. The salted, sugared cream should float atop the cold coffee without collapsing into it, creating two distinct layers: one dark and weighty like a horseshoe, and the other light as a feather.
Bacon and Onion Pasta
Building off of the simple but powerfully flavorful Italian dish pasta aglio, olio e peperoncino, this wondrous pantry recipe gets much of its flavor from bacon fat and caramelized onions. The one-two-three punch of spicy red-pepper flakes, aromatic garlic slivers and savory herbes de Provence bloomed in fat provides the umami-rich base for this easy workday meal. Red vermouth creates a rich, jammy pasta sauce edged with sweetness. Don’t sleep on angel hair pasta: It’s got the right airy bounciness that’s excellent at soaking up seasonings. Threaded with parsley and Parmesan, these generously oiled noodles are a dream to eat.