Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we’re hoping you all had a restful Labor Day in the US, and…whatever happened in your respective country of residence otherwise. You know, hope it was a decent Monday. Or Tuesday. Time zones are weird. Anyway, today, we’re back to Korea for another dish, this one made by the Master of Ceremonies himself, Jon O’Guin. So if you want fish, seaweed, and a whole heck of a simple mess, you’re in the right place, because we’re making gimbap. You can go straight to the recipe here, but for everyone else, let’s dig in.

Give ‘Em One for the Gim-per

I should note, before we go too far, that G and K in Korean are one of those sounds that don’t 100% translate. Honestly, I should have addressed this a long time ago…and I kind of did, but I didn’t explain why: basically, in the Korean alphabet, there are 10 vowels, and 14 consonants. So, when translating to English, there are multiple consonants that pull double-duty, specifically: G/K, B/P, L/R, and D/T. So, if you remember our Galbi post, yes, ALL of the plosive pulmonic consonants overlap with their lingual partner.

Which is HUGE, given the sheer number of Korean dishes and words that start with those letters. Especially the ones famous here: Kalbi/Galbi, Bibimbap, Gochujang, Kimchi…hell, no wonder there’s a ton of different spellings of “tteokbokki”: because over HALF that word is symbols that can be confused based on a slight change in accent/pronunciation. If anything, it’s more interesting how and where the seemingly firm translations came down, because, yeah, technically, you could say “gimchi”, but it’s MUCH rarer to see than Galbi vs Kalbi.

There are dozens of brands and varieties in this picture, but I bet none of them say “gimchi”. I see “kim chee” more often than that.

So yes, I will be calling this dish “gimbap”, despite it also being called “kimbap”.  This is partly because I know I would be unable to avoid making a bunch of “k-bap” jokes, and also for clarity, because of how the name translates: “bap”, as we’ve covered before, is “cooked rice”. “Gim” is the Korean equivalent of Japanese nori, which we just talked about with the Furikake post: a sheet of dried, maybe toasted, seaweed. This is “Seaweed-rice”, and the instant someone served it to you, you would instantly recognize it. Because it’s basically Korean Sushi.

In traditional Korean manner, it’s like whatever Japan does, but with more red, and less fish.

Now, let’s put a VERY big asterisk on that sentence. Not Comment Jon’s, I have no idea what joke he made, because he’s me from the Future, and I hate him. Specifically, it should be noted that the focus of the two is very different, as the names signify: as we’ve mentioned before, the Japanese word sushi comes from the word “sour/salted”, because the dish was initially fermented/cured fish. The FULL name was “salted fish”. The fish is the POINT of Sushi. Korean instead focuses on the RICE. And technically, of course, there’s a bunch of forms of Japanese sushi, while Gimbap…well, it has multiple forms, but nowhere near as drastically different as say, Chirashi, nigiri, and maki, which is the one that this looks like.

Lastly, it should be noted that some people maintain that gimbap just COINCIDENTALLY looks like maki sushi, and that it’s actually a formalized form of bokssam…which is kind of hard to swallow, since ssam are Korean lettuce wraps. Like, MAYBE it’s a marriage of ssambap (rice-filled ssam, since NORMAL SSAM DOESN’T USE RICE) and Makizushi, but saying it’s just a cool take on Bokssam would be like me arguing that the Chimichanga is descended from the Corn Dog, not the Burrito: there may have been some inspiration there, but we know where this came from.

Yes. I for one entirely believe this was inspired by sweet-corn-batter on a hot dog.

So, since the point of Gimbap is the rice, it’s useful to know that, to my joy, they’re much less nautically focused in their selection of ingredients. Bulgogi Gimbap are pretty common, as are plain veggie. It’s very parallel to like, deli sandwiches: like, a kind of classic/go-to American sandwich is bread, lettuce, cheese, maybe a tomato or onion, and a sliced deli meat. Could be ham, or turkey, roast beef, whatever. It’s the same kind of vibe with gimbap: You’ve got rice, seaweed, a couple pickled/crunchy vegetables, and a protein. Could be tofu, could be fish, could be whatever.

There are, as mentioned, several varieties of gimbap, and some interesting culinary uses for it, but…no lie, I did a lot more drinking and socializing this past weekend than intended, so I’m hammering this out Monday night, and we don’t have time to unpack them all. Maybe we’ll talk about it Thursday. Instead, let’s get to work!

Roll it Up Now Baby

Now, my family actually decided to make this as a sort of culinary christening. My mother recently decided to pick up a modern rice cooker, to feed her growing appetite for Asian cuisine.

I call it “the rice pig”, because it’s got a round body, little legs, and…makes rice.

We went with a Zojirushi model used by several YouTubers that Nate and I both occasionally watch, and that was recommended by the New York Times. It holds up to 5.5 cups, has a suite of features, and was around $150, which is not all that expensive as far as fancy rice cookers go, but I understand if it’s too much for your budget. Like, it IS basically twice the cost of an Instant Pot. It makes sense to invest in a lot of Asian households, where you might be making a pot of rice 5+ times a week. It’s probably overkill if you’re only making 1 pot of rice a month. Where the tipping point is for you is totally your call.

So the idea was to make a rice-forward dish (ie, gimbap) to celebrate the new cooker/make sure we understood how to use it. And it worked, which is reassuring, since like, the POINT of a rice cooker is that it should be easy and reliable. Once you get your rice, you want to dress it with sesame oil: unlike sushi rice (which uses a light brine of sugar, salt and vinegar) gimbap mostly uses a bit of sesame oil and salt. Season it, let it cool, and then lay it out on some seaweed, and start layering in ingredients.

Slap that grain on the gimbap train!

For our gimbap rolls, we had a fairly small selection of fillings that we felt we’d like. The big one was danmuji, a pickled Radish frequently used in gimbap. It’s bright yellow, crunchy, and a little sweet. With that, we had sliced sticks of cucumber, as well as sliced red peppers and avocados, some scrambled eggs, and some imitation crab sticks.  We alternated rolls using crab or eggs, so that we’d have options without fish and some with fish.

Here is a fish one, because I wanted this shot to have more red in it. I felt there wasn’t enough, you know?

It’s interesting, in my mind, how much culturally, or at least, filially, we’ve gotten accustomed to the idea of making sushi. Like, if you’d talked to younger me about it, I’d have told you the idea’s cool, but sushi’s too fiddly to make at home. You gotta cook the rice, get good fish, learn how to roll it right, etc. Hell, even just a year or two ago, we struggled a bit to make California rolls. But maybe it was the fact that the seaweed was on the outside, the differences in texture between sushi rice and gimbap rice, or our rice was just better cooked, but these were MUCH easier to neatly roll up.

Very obvious that this is what the picture is of, of course.

And the dish didn’t feel as fiddly or as complicated as younger me would have labeled sushi. Maybe it’s personal growth, maybe it’s a family attitude, and maybe it’s just years more familiarity with sushi, and cooking, and a general cultural shift moving sushi from the foreign to the every-day. (At least in my region.)

Anyway, once rolled up, and allowed to sit for a bit to help seal the loose end of the seaweed, they were ready to cut, which they did fairly neatly and easily as well. (Though we definitely remembered one of the lessons from the California Roll fiasco, which was “oil your knife before cutting”, and it helped remarkably.)

Noice.

The results were good! There’s definitely a subtly different vibe due to the flavor of the rice. Like, at least one of our rolls was basically just a California roll: cucumber, avocado, imitation crab. But it didn’t FEEL like a normal California roll. Gimbap, unlike sushi, isn’t technically meant to be seasoned (ie, you don’t get it with soy sauce and wasabi. You can add those things, but they’re not standard), which also created a different feeling. But my family really enjoyed them. We ate all 4 roles we made within like, and hour, and have discussed other recipes we can try with them in the future. If you can find the radish, and some fun fillings, I definitely recommend you try it out yourself.

THURSDAY: I GUESS WE TALK ABOUT MORE GIMBAP STUFF? MAYBE SOME AARON AND CLAIRE ACTION? I DUNNO.

MONDAY: I THINK WE’RE DRINKING, BUT IT’LL DEPEND ON WHAT ALL I GET DONE.

Recipe

Gimbap

Makes 4 rolls

Ingredients

Rice

3-4 cups freshly cooked white rice, still hot

2 tbsps sesame oil

1 tsp salt

                The rest

4 nori/gim sheets

¼ pickled yellow radish (danmuji/takuan), cut into 4 long batons

2-3 batons cucumber

3 “legs” of imitation crab

Or whatever, you know?

Preparation

1. Toss the rice with the sesame oil and salt. Allow to cool.

2. Lay the nori sheet on a rolling mat, plastic wrap, or, if confident, nothing. (the other surfaces will just make it easier to roll up.) Spread rice over 75% of the sheet, leaving the edge farthest away from you uncovered, to be sealed after rolling.

3. Place the fillings of your choice in each roll, about three quarters of an inch (2 cm) from the edge closest to you. Roll said edge up and over the fillings, continue to roll tightly, ending with the final stretch of seaweed pinned under the roll. Let sit for 1-2 minutes, then cut into bite size rolls and serve.