A Korean Home Meal: Banchan, Doenjang Stew & Spicy Pork
Watch on YouTube
Ingredients
- rice
- cucumbers
- bean sprouts
- garlic
- green chillies
- red seasoning, to taste
- doenjang (soybean paste)
- zucchini
- tofu
- enoki mushrooms
- thinly sliced pork
- red marinade for the pork, to taste
- onion
- carrot
- green onion
- lettuce and napa cabbage leaves, for wrapping
Steps
- Wash the rice by hand in cold water.
- Rinse the cucumbers, slice them thin and mix them with onion, green chillies, garlic and a red seasoning for the cucumber banchan (oi-muchim).
- Rinse the bean sprouts, then chop the garlic and green chilli.
- Season the bean sprouts with the garlic, chilli and seasoning, toss by hand and pack them into a container (kongnamul-muchim).
- Spoon doenjang into a clay pot, add zucchini, tofu and enoki, and cook the stew (doenjang-jjigae).
- Mix the sliced pork with a spicy red marinade by hand.
- Stir-fry the pork in a hot pan with the vegetables until the sauce is glossy (jeyuk-bokkeum).
- Wash lettuce and cabbage leaves for wrapping, then set everything on the table.
This is a whole Korean home meal, cooked from start to finish in one video. Rice, two banchan (small side dishes), doenjang-jjigae (soybean paste stew) and jeyuk-bokkeum (spicy stir-fried pork) all come together on one table, with fresh greens to wrap the pork. The video is about fifteen minutes long and has twelve chapters, so you can jump to any dish.
The cooking runs in the order it was filmed, from washing the rice to setting the table, about an hour of real time. You see the cucumber rinsed, sliced thin and mixed; the bean sprouts rinsed and seasoned with garlic and green chilli; the stew built in a clay pot from paste, zucchini, tofu and enoki; and the pork marinated by hand and stir-fried until glossy.
Many Korean home meals work this way: several small dishes made at once and shared on the same table. There is no talking and no music, so you can cook along and hear the knife, the water and the pan.
Cooking the leftovers the next day: Watch the day-2 leftover video