Kimchi Jjigae (김치찌개) is a Korean stew dish which consist mainly of pickled Korean cabbage known as kimchi. In former times people used to prepare Jjigae as there were leftovers of non well-fermented or tasteless Kimchi.
That kind of Kimchi was not eaten as side dish You can prepare Jjigae in various ways.
The most renowned variant uses pork meat, but instead you can try to cook it with tuna, ham oder sausage, too. There are also other Jjigaes that don’t use Kimchi as base but Soy bean paste. Serve it with either rice or noodles (ramyeon). Tried the dish to do it by myself recently and was astonished how to boost up bad kimchi ;)
You will need to get these ingredients:
- 100g Kimchi
- 150g pork belly (or tuna)
- 100g tofu
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- 1 piece, medium-sized onion
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1-2 tbsp red pepper powder
Let’s start
- Quarter onions.
- Mince the garlic. Either use a knife and cut it as small as possible or use some masher.
- Cut pork belly into small pieces. I used porl cutlet because it consists less fat, but pork belly meat might be more tender.
- Cut tofu into dices.
- Take a small pot (or a stone pot if you have one), add 1 tbsp sesame oil and garlic. Don’t let it become overfried!
- Sauté onions until skin becomes lucent.
- Add meat, fry until pink color’s gone. Also add 1 tbsp pepper and mix well with meat.
- Add tofu and Kimchi.
- Add the Kimchi brine. If it’s still not spicy enough, add pepper and salt.
- cook for 45-60 minutes, serve with rice or ramyeon.
Guten Appetit!