Culture Tuesday is a weekly column in which Best of Vegan Editor Samantha Onyemenam explores different cultures’ cuisines across the globe through a plant-based and vegan lens. Before you start exploring vegan Korean recipes, you might want to click here to read her original column about Korean cuisine.
Culture Tuesday – 5 More Vegan Korean Recipes You Need To Try
This is a complementary piece to the article on Korean cuisine. This piece, split into two parts, consists of 10 vegan-friendly Korean recipes from Korean foodies and recipe developers. It includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes as well as treats/snacks and side dishes. This piece will introduce you to 5 more Korean dishes through history and recipes. Click here for part one of this article.
Gogigui/Gui
Gogigui, more commonly known in the diaspora as ‘Korean Barbecue,’ refers to the Korean practices of grilling marinated and/or non-marinated meats to make a range of dishes. This practice, like many non-vegan ones, has also been adapted by various plant-based cooks to make vegan versions of gogigui dishes such as the renowned bulgogi.
Bulgogi is a grilled sliced meat dish that originated in North Korea, although it is very popular in South Korea and the diaspora. Despite being a gui, bulgogi is also commonly stir-fried/pan-fried by home cooks who do not have a grill or would rather not use one at certain times.
Over the years, this dish has evolved both in name and preparation. When it originated during the Three Kingdom Era (in the Goguryeo Kingdom), it was grilled on skewers and called ‘maekjeok.’ During the Joseon Dynasty, it was known as ‘yeomjeok,’ and ‘neobiani,’ which mean ‘fire meat’ and ‘thinly spread,’ respectively as bulgogi is grilled thinly sliced meat.
At the time of each era, bulgogi was a skewered dish. However, modern-day bulgogi is not grilled on skewers, and the skewered version is now known as ‘bulgogi sanjeok.’
In this recipe, Remy of VeggieKins shows how she makes her vegan, gluten-free, and refined sugar-free bulgogi in a pan.
Jorim
Jorim refers to Korean braised dishes. These are dishes in which the main ingredient is fried or sautéed till browned, then simmered in a sauce (usually soy sauce-based, but could also be gochujang or gochugaru-based) until the sauce reduces and thickens. Gamja jorim is a rather popular example of a jorim dish. It is essentially potatoes that are sautéed till golden then simmered in a slightly sweet braising liquid containing soy sauce, sugar (or an alternative sweetener), black pepper, and water (or vegetable stock). However, it also often contains onions, garlic, and Korean chili peppers (or another chili), the oil used to brown the potatoes, and the sesame oil and seeds used to finish and garnish the dish. This dish is traditionally vegan.
In this recipe, Joanne shows how to make her omma’s (mother’s) gamja jorim:
Myeon
Myeon, which is also known as ‘guksu,’ are Korean noodles and are believed to have existed in some form, as far back as 6000BC. However, it was more commonly made of buckwheat or rice and sometimes from Korean mugwort or kudzu (arrowroot) too, as wheat is not native to Korea or East Asia and thus was not as available in ancient times as it is now.
Jjajangmyeon is an example of a myeon dish. It is of Northern Chinese origin and was introduced to Korea in the early 1900s. However, its Korean recipe differs from that of zhánjiàngmiàn (the original Chinese version).
Korean jjajangmyeon is made using thick pulled noodles made from a mixture of wheat flour, baking soda, salt, and water. They are topped (then mixed) in a black jjajang sauce containing chunjang (fermented wheat flour and soybean paste), soy sauce, sugar, onions, garlic, ginger, vegetables (usually Korean courgettes/zucchinis, cabbage, and/or potatoes), stock, and corn/potato starch.
This dish is often non-vegan due to the addition of pork, beef, or seafood. Nevertheless, vegan cooks and those opting for more plant-based dishes have developed jjajangmyeon recipes such as this one by Seonkyoung Longest:
Buchimgae
Buchimgae, also sometimes referred to as, ‘jeon,’ is a savory Korean pancake. Despite it being used interchangeably with jeon, those terms refer to two different types of dishes. Their difference lies in the method or technique used to make the dish.
Buchimgae consists of all the ingredients (vegetables and batter ingredients) being mixed together in a large bowl before being ladled into a pan in portions and fried. On the other hand, jeon is made by individually coating vegetables in a batter and frying them. Thus, buchimgae technically refers to pancakes while jeon refers to fritters despite ‘-jeon’ being the suffix to a number of buchimgae dishes such as pajeon and yachaejeon.
Yachaejeon is a vegetable buchimgae that is traditionally vegan (although some non-vegan households might choose to include non-vegan ingredients in it). It consists of thinly sliced and/or julienned vegetables (usually courgettes/zucchinis, carrots, leeks, spring onions, and/or sweet potatoes) mixed in a 100% hydration (equal weights of flour and water) batter containing flour, salt, and water. The mixture is fried in batches until golden brown and cooked through then served with a soy sauce-vinegar dipping sauce.
Yachaejeon can also be considered as pajeon (“pa” meaning spring onions/scallions) as it contains spring onions. However, pajeon often contains non-vegan ingredients and predominantly features spring onions whereas the variety of vegetables in yachaejeon is more prominent.
In this recipe, Maangchi shows how she makes her traditional yachaejeon:
Kkwabaegi
Kkwabaegi is a Korean twisted doughnut made from yeasted dough and coated in cinnamon sugar. It is renowned for its crispy exterior encasing a soft, fluffy, and chewy interior. Although it is made with wheat flour today, historical sources such as The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty hint at it possibly being made using glutinous rice flour like another Korean doughnut, chapssal. The Annals mention that kkwabaegi existed during the isolation period which preceded the inundation of westerners and western influence into Korea. Thus, glutinous rice flour could have originally been used to achieve kkwabaegi’s distinct textural characteristics as what was relatively scarce in Korea during that period. Nevertheless, these annals, in addition to others, also suggest that kkwabaegi is of Chinese origin (from the Hangzhou region) and is an adaptation of the Chinese yóutiáo.
In this recipe, Joanne shows how she makes her vegan kkwabaegi (as kkwabaegi is traditionally non-vegan).
