Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Korean food Ingredients : what they are & where you can buy them

1. Meat



1)Pork belly : you can buy one at Korean markets, or some big grocery stores.
This is the same part of pork as bacon but is a little thicker than bacon.


2. Sauce base & Oils



1) soy sauce : gan-jang
This is the soy sauce I used. You can buy it at Korean market cheaply.
In America, many people have Japanese soy sauce, but it gives a dish saltier taste, so you can reduce the amount of soy sauce used for Korean dish.
 



2)red pepper paste : go-choo-jang
you can buy this at Korean stores. This is a basic ingredient of many Korean foods.




3)dry red pepper flakes : go-choot-ga-roo
   you can buy this at Korean stores.



4)soy bean paste : Doen-jang
This has strong smell, i.e. stinky, but is believed to be healthy food, anticancer.



5)Black bean paste : Chun-jang



6)Ssam-jang
This is dipping sauce mixed with red pepper paste, soy bean paste and others.
You can make even better ssamjang by adding crushed nuts.
This is good dipping sauce when you make ssam. 'ssam' is food when you wrap it in a vegetable leaf , such as red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, or cabbage.




7)sesame seed oil : cham-gi-rm
This is brown dressing oil, not yellow cooking oil. This is the essential ingredient for many traditional Korean foods. All recipes posted on my blog use this brown sesame seed oil, unless I specifically mention to use yellow one.





8)Cooking wine : use dry white wine. In some meat dish, you can also use dry red wine.
This is the white wine (Sauvignon Blanc) I used for cooking.
This wine is good and dry enough to make good Korean dishes.




9)rice cooking wine
This tastes like vodka. it is used for getting rid of pork's gamey taste.
you may substitute this with any clear, non-flavored, alcohol.




10)corn syrup :mool-yut
  Corn syrup is weet sticky sauce. You can substitute this with honey or malt syrup, jo-chung any time.



11) oyster sauce
This tastes sweet and salty. Generally, you can use this for stir-fry dish for mild sweet and salty taste. Of course, if you have allegy with oyster, you should not use this.



12) Anchovy powder
This is an essential ingredient to cook many of Korean stew or soup with rich flavor. You can also buy dried big anchovys and boil them in the water to make an anchovy stock.



3. Vegetables & Mushrooms

1)Korean radish
   Korean radish is a big white round radish. It is one of Daikon radishes. This is used for some stew with fish, or cold noodle dishes.

2) shiitake mushrooms
  This is called 'pyo-go' in Korean. You can use this usually with marinated meat dish because of its meaty taste.

3)king oyster mushrooms
these mushrroms are meaty, so they taste really yummy when you grill them. You can also make side dish with these.

4)enokitake mushrooms
These are really good for Korean stews.

5) white mushrooms & minibella mushrooms
     These are used for soups. You can grill these on the stove top when you make ssam.

6) moki mushrooms

     These mushrooms look different to other types. The package says "black mushrooms" in English. You use these in tangsuyuk.





     

7) pepper
   Green bell pepper is used for many Korean dishes. This is not hot at all. You can substitute this with Anaheim pepper.
  Usually Korean pepper is harder and more expensive to get, so you can buy serrano or jalapeno peppers.
 When you add hot taste into your dish, you can also use Thai pepper, instead of Korean hot pepper(chung-ryang-go-choo).
Scale of hotness of various peppers


8) Bean Sprouts-1 : sook-joo
   You can buy sook-joo in any big grocery stores in the US.  These are mung bean sprouts.
We use this for cooked side dish. In this blog, bean sprouts refer to mung bean sprouts.


9) Bean Sprouts-2 : kong-nah-mool
 Kong-nah-mool is more yellow and has bigger bean head than sook-joo. You can buy this at Korean markets.
Kong-nah-mool is used for side dish, adding to various of stew or soup, mixed vegetable steamed rice (bibim-bop).
In this blog, I'll refer this as Kong-nah-mool ( a kind of bean sprouts).

10) Young radish : yeol-moo
This stem of Korean radish is used for making a kind of kimchi. Additionally, young radish kimchi  is a good side dish for meat dish, or an ingredients of special  mixed-rice (bibim-bop) and special cold noodles ( naeng-myeon).




4. Others



1) rice cake: ddeok (pronounce like 'duck' with a strong d sound)
  you can buy this at Korean markets. It usually says 'rice cake' on the package.
or you can ask for 'ddeok' at the store. There are two kinds of shape for rice cake.
One is cylindrical shape, and this is used for Red Sauce Rice Cake (Ddeok-bok-ki) or other dishes which has rice cake wrapped in something.
The other is sliced into oval shape, is used for various dishes, like Soy sauce Rice Cake (royal-ddeok-bok-ki) or Rice Cake soup (Ddeok-gook).




2) fish cake : uh-mook
Fish cake is used for various dish, such as a soup, a stew, stir-fried dish, etc.



3) sweet rice flour : chap-ssal-ga-roo
 You can buy this at Korean market. This is different from usual rice flour. This gives soft and sticy rice cake when heated with water. For example, check this dessert.


4) Green tea powder
You can buy this at Korean market.
You can make tea by adding hot water (and honey) to it. You can make green tea ice cream by mixing it into vanilla ice cream or by mixing it with heavy cream.




5) Korean Vermicelli
    This is Korean noodle made of popato starch. This is used for jap-chae or for adding it to bulgogi or bulgogi stew. You can buy it from Korean markets.



6) Dried kelp
This is usually used for making a Korean stew or soup.
You can also use this to make some side dishes. 


7)Korean pancake mix
Korean pancake is more like a main dish for drinking or a side dish with or without steam
rice, not as a breakfast. Korean pancake is called 'jeon' or 'boo-chim-gae'.
You can make various kinds of pancake with this, such as, kimchi jeon, pah(green onion) jeon, hae-mool(seafoods) jeon, shrimp jeon, or squash jeon. Jeon is usually served with soy sauce based sauce with additional vinegar, red pepper flakes, sesame seeds oil, or sugar. 

1 comment:

dry white wine said...

Dry white wine serves as a very good flavoring for meat, grain, noodle, rice and soup dishes. The alcohol content in the wine evaporates during the cooking process.