Learning (and Mastering) the Art of 김밥

김밥

Gimbap

Gimbap is a typical Korean snack, like a sushi roll, but filled with ham/spam, beef or tuna, fried egg, carrots, sauteed spinach, Korean mountain weeds and pickled radish.

The description sounds gross, but gimbap can actually be pretty good. The plain ham gimbap, often called 'well-being gimbap' is the worst and the cheapest. The low-quality Korean 'spam' takes over the flavor and makes them taste a little dirty. The tuna gimbap (참치김밥 /pronounced cham-chi gim-bap) is by far the best. It tastes like canned tuna and mayo wrapped in rice and seaweed, delicious!

For a Home Visit program, we went to Shin's house to learn how to make them. Shin is the teacher from Andrew's school that gives him a ride each morning, and just an all around amazing woman. The gimbap we prepared at her house had beef, egg, carrots, spinach, mountain weeds and radish.

Learning to fill and roll them.
The key is to spread the rice gently.
"Soft, soft, soft!" Shin repeatedly scolded.

Andrew, Shin & Judy

Judy slicing and arranging the gimbap on a platter

Iron Chef Judy slicing the gimbap

신은영 & 수현
Shin and her youngest daughter, Su-Hyun

Ready to eat!
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A week or so after, we decided to have our own gimbap dinner, Judy & Andrew style. Instead of the traditional ingredients, we used various mixes of rotisserie chicken, tuna, breaded & fried pork cutlet (돈까스 / pronounced don-kat-su or don-kats), egg, cucumber, avocado, corn and red pepper. We also tossed ketchup, honey mustard, wasabi and mayonnaise into the mix...

Dustin Hoffman at our work table.

Please note the microwavable, single servings of
sticky rice on the left side of the table, awesome!

Rolled and ready for slicing

Mmmm! Let's eat!

Our American-ized versions of gimbap were good,
but didn't turn out quite as delicious as we had hoped.
The best one ended up being the donkatsu, corn and ketchup!