Kimchi Jjigae (Kimchi Stew)

Kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) is one of my family's favorite dishes, and a prototypical Korean dish -- flavorful, bold, and craveable. There are variants of recipes of aged kimchi (the main ingredient of this dish) that are also delicious and I'll post some recipes for those soon -- kimchi bbokeum (as a side dish, something you can eat with rice and geim a fried salted seaweed and other things) or kimchi bbokeumbap (kimchi fried rice), but kimchi jjigae might take the cake on all the aged kimchi dishes for me!

Ingredients:

1 bowl of kimchi (aged)

1 1/2 bowls of water

2 Tbsp of corn oil (or vegetable oil)

1/2 Tbsp of dashida (beef broth granules)

1 Tbsp of sugar

1 Tbsp of gochujang (red pepper paste)

1 Tbsp of gochuggaru (red pepper flakes)

1 Tbsp of gook ganjang (soup soy sauce)

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp sesame oil

Soft Tofu

Spam (or bulgogi or pork; see below)

Directions:
1. Mix aged kimchi, water, corn oil, dashida, sugar, gochujang, gochuggaru, gook ganjang, garlic, and sesame oil in pot and bring to a boil.

2. On the side, boil spam in a pot of water for 5-10 minutes then drain.

3. After boiling soup for 5-10 minutes, add soft tofu and spam.

4. If desired, salt to taste (but probably won't need it.. if anything, I added more sugar to taste!).

Serve with a side of rice (pretty much like anything else haha). Instead of spam, you can use bulgogi (marinated beef) or more traditionally, pork (or of course, no meat and no dashida to make it vegetarian). You can also add other veggies such as onions for even more flavor! Also, sometimes, you find this dish with some type of noodle in it (glass noodles or ramen noodles), which can be a good addition. You can also top with chopped green onions, mmm.