Do you have nicely fermented kimchi in your refrigerator? Then this is going to be one of the easiest, simplest, and fastest recipes you will ever make!
Stir-fry your kimchi for 5 minutes, then it will turn into very delicious side dish! A side dish for what? Yes, I mean rice, cooked rice. Spicy, salty, and a little sweet fried kimchi really goes well with a good bowl of rice.
Have you ever heard of a “bapdoduk (밥도둑)”?
Bap means cooked rice in Korean and doduk (pronounced “dodook”) is thief. A bapdoduk is a dish that goes so well with rice that as you are eating it you don’t even notice that your rice disappears, it’s so tasty. This dish is a kind of bapdoduk side dish, it’s so delicious that you will keep eating it with your rice.
This dish is also perfect for a dosirak (lunchbox) because cooked kimchi loses the stronger, pungent smell of uncooked kimchi and it has less moisture, too. When you put uncooked kimchi in a lunchbox it can get kind of smelly and the juices can spread to other items in the lunchbox unless you put it in its own container. When making kimchi-bokkeum with really juicy kimchi, squeeze out the excess brine before chopping it up so that your kimchi-bokkeum doesn’t get too watery.
I add a little bit of sugar and gochujang to my stir-fried kimchi because these two ingredients will enhance the taste a lot, of course along with sesame oil.
You can recreate the dosirak I made in the video with my tuna pancakes (chamchijeon: 참치전) recipe and my crunchy squid threads (ojingeo-silchae-bokkeum: 오징어실채볶음) recipe. Wrap them in a lunchbox (here’s the Thermos one I used) along with rice! 
Ingredients
- 1 pound (453 grams) fermented sour kimchi, chopped
- ¼ cup onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 to 2 tablespoons gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
Directions
- Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the kimchi and onion and stir it with a wooden spoon for about 1 minute.
- Add sugar and gochujang. Keep stirring for about another 4 minutes until the kimchi softens and the onion looks translucent.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the sesame oil.
- Serve as a side dish for rice. Put the leftovers into an airtight container and refrigerator up to 1 week.
I love well aged kimchee, until it is nice and sour. I make my own and always let some of it age. Funny, isn’t it, that there was no spicy kimchee until Columbus came to the new world. He shared hot peppers (and tomatoes, potatoes, corn and other things) with the world. Yay Columbus! Great dish! Great plaid, too!
Maangchi, I made this recipe today as part of my dosirak! I’m really excited to eat it for lunch- I’ll come back and let you know how good it was!
I also made your mung bean sprout side dish using mung beans I grew myself, as well as the spinach and carrot dishes from your bibimbap video.
Thank you so much for all your delicious recipes!
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My lunch was delicious!