My husband and I went to a Korean cooking class today and I was so grateful to get a better understanding of Korean food. The teacher, Leah Kim, demonstrated Gimbop, Kimchi and a Tofu Stew. Below you can see some pictures I took right before the class ate it all! Korean food is delicious!

Gimbop is one of the most popular and nutritious Korean meals. It consists of rice and strips of vegetables, egg, and meat, rolled in laver (dried seaweed) and sliced. This is a popular snack or lunch and the main difference between it and Japanese sushi is gimbop uses a lot more ingredients. Also gimbop doesn’t use raw fish.

Gim refers to the sheets of dried seaweed, and bop is the Korean word for cooked rice.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish consisting of fermented chili peppers and vegetables, usually based on cabbage. Every region in Korea makes a different type of Kimchi and even when two cooks use the same ingredients it won’t taste the same.

Kimchi has been cited by Health Magazine as one of the world’s five “healthiest foods”, with the claim that it is rich in vitamins, aids digestion, and may even prevent cancer.

Soondooboo Chigae is a spicy stew made with soondooboo which is soft uncoagulated tofu. It is produced without undergoing the process of compression, which removes the water and curdling it firmly. There are numerous variations of this dish consisting of seafood, beef, pork and/or vegetable. Plain soondooboo chigae is usually made with some added pieces of pork, several small clams, chopped garlic, and red chili pepper flakes (kochukaru) along with chopped leeks and sesame oil. (In this class it was made with mushrooms instead of meat.)