My top 3 Super Easy Korean Dinners - Marion's Kitchen

Korean style stir-fried noodles packed full of veggie, some stir-fried beef. This one is super simple but a few little techniques will make it extra special. This is my version of Korean japchae. This is one of my favorite noodle dishes to order in a Korean restaurant. And for me, it seems like a very simple stir-fried noodle dish. But there are a lot of little critical elements here that you want to get just right to make it extra good. And we always want extra good. Well, I do anyway. Let's talk about... What are we talking about first? Let's do the beefy part first. I'm going to make a marinade which is also going to be our stir-fry sauce. So that's a win. I've got my beef here. I'm just using some strip loin or sirloin steak today. The key is you want it sliced really nice and thin. Now to that, I'm going to add some soy sauce and some sesame oil and some sugar. Let's give that a mix. Because this is a soy sauce marinade, you really don't need to leave it for long. Literally just while I'm going to prepare everything else. Otherwise, it gets too salty and intense. Let's have a look at the vegetables next. Shiitake mushrooms is what I'm going for here. A lot of you guys have asked me before about how do I clean the dirt off my mushrooms. For me, washing them underwater just gets them all soggy and I don't know. I don't like it. I like to go with a pastry brush and just give them a really good brushing. Get any little bits of grime off there. If you're using dried shiitakes here, they're great to use. You just need to soak them in some hot water first. Man overboard. We'll just leave that one down there. Casualty. First casualty of the day. Now whether you're using fresh or dried, I always take the stems off my shiitake mushrooms. I find they're a little tough so they're not so great to chew on. If you happen to be making a stock anytime soon, you could keep a hold of them. Pop them into your stock along with your other vegetables. I just want to finely slice those. The other thing I want here is some capsicum. I want some really nice, fine shreds of capsicum. I'm going to go fairly close to the edge here when I'm cutting off my cheeks of capsicum. I'll just pop those onto a plate with my finely sliced onion. Now for the noodles. If you are able to get a hold of what's called Korean sweet potato starch noodles, they're the noodles that you want for this one, typically. But I can't seem to find them here in Bangkok. If anyone knows where to get those particular noodles here in Bangkok, please put that in the comments below. What I do when I make this dish at home is I use glass noodles or cellophane noodles. These are made out of mung bean. They have a similar kind of slippery texture to the Korean sweet potato ones. They're not quite as thick. That's the kind of difference here. The key thing is that these guys will overcook in like a second. Let's be prepared. I've got a bowl with some ice in here. I've got my boiling water. Normally, I would advocate to soak these and not put them in boiling water. But I'm going to cook my spinach anyway. I don't want to double up on the amount of energy to boil two lots of water. We're just going to do it this way, the danger mouse way. But be vigilant. Noodles go in. Literally like less than a minute, guys. 30 seconds even. You guys can probably see on the counter there how long this is. Take it out. Take them out right now. They'll kind of look like they're not quite cooked yet. That's fine. They're going to keep cooking a little bit. Then we're going to stir-fry them as well. These get really soggy really easily. Definitely don't want to overcook them. Straight into the ice. Just kind of separate them. Give them some love. Make sure they're nice and cool. Just drain them really well. Now the spinach. I want a good lot of spinach here. I love this dish because it's got so many vegetables in it. It's just such a nice healthy weeknight thing to do. I'm going to trim off the end of that. Then they go straight into the water as well. Again, this is one of those little technical things that is just much better when you get it right. Don't cook this for ages. Just plunge. Take them out. Then you may as well, because you've got it, dunk those in the ice water as well. I'm going to squeeze out that water. There's our spinach done. Even just the colours of everything set up here makes me so incredibly happy. I love a little spread like this. So many vegetables. Now we can get to the stir-frying part. I'm going to use this marinade, as I said before, as my stir-fry sauce. I'm going to take the beef out of there. Just give it a gentle squeeze. Keep that sauce for later. Now when your wok is nice and hot, add in some oil. In goes the beef. Just stir-fry this until most of the pink is almost gone. But what I don't want to do is overcook this beef while I'm cooking everything else. So before it's done, I'm going to add in my onions. Now just give the onion like half a minute to do its thing. Get a little tender in there. Now don't be tempted to kind of dump everything in. That's when you'll start to get a stir-fry that sweats, becomes like very bland because of all the juice that runs out because the wok or the pan's not staying hot enough. That's why you'll always see me add ingredients kind of one at a time whenever I'm doing a stir-fry like this. Now I'm going to add in some garlic. And in go my mushrooms. Capsicum. Some shredded carrots. Now add in those noodles and don't be scared. They're going to look like they're kind of all bunched up and clumpy at the moment. That's just what happens when noodles sit around for a little while. The sauce will loosen them up. Trust me. I want my spinach in there too. And that sauce. Now just start tossing everything through and those noodles will start to loosen up. See what I mean about all those beautiful cheerful colors? It's such a joy. And if you've treated your noodles right, you should have a very loose looking noodle stir-fry. Always treat your noodles nice. Okay. That is looking so good. Now we just get these out onto a plate. And a little sprinkling of sesame seeds at the end. And there you go guys. A very simple Korean stir-fry noodle dish. But get all those little bits and pieces right. And it really is something joyous and good and tasty. Let's see how we've gone here. That beef is so tender. Just the really simple mix of vegetables combined with that soy sauce and the garlic. And those chewy noodles. I mean it's the texture of the noodles that you've really got to get right. I mean that's the key here, right? Look at that. Perfectly kind of chewy. Not soggy at all. The best slightly spicy sesame stir-fried beef and eggporn. Who doesn't love eggporn? And look at that wok full of beautiful veg. We're going to make my version of easy Korean bibimbap. So bibimbap is one of those great things to have in a restaurant. Where all these little separate bits and pieces have been lovingly cooked for you by about a million chefs out the back. But when you're at home, there's only one chef and that's you. So we're going to make a really easy version of this that doesn't involve making a whole bunch of different little bits and pieces. Just a couple of bits and pieces. So let's get started making our finishing sauce first of all. So I'm going to use some of this Korean gochujang paste. So this is a fermented chili paste. You can find it in most mainstream grocery stores now or check it out online. I want a fairly big scoop full of that because I'm going to be doubling up here with both sauces that we're making for this dish because it's easier. So this finishing sauce is also going to be added to our marinade. Now to that, I'm going to add some mirin. Some soy sauce. Some sugar. And some sesame seeds. Just mix that together. It's a little stubborn to start with but it'll loosen up soon. Alright, that's looking good. Such an easy little sauce to put together. But it has some kick and it is tasty my friends. Yum! Now for the beef. I recommend using a tender cut of beef here. There's nothing worse than trying to dig into a bowl of bibimbap with some chopsticks, i.e. not a knife, and having a really tough piece of meat. So I'm using ribeye. You could use fillet. Even rump steak is pretty good here as well. Now I like to slice on the diagonal here because that tends to make things a little bit more tender. Keeping this a little chunkier than I normally would for a stir-fry. I just want some really hearty, decent chunks of beef here. Pop that beef into a bowl. Now for our second sauce which is going to double as marinade and stir-fry sauce. We just want some soy sauce. Mirin. Sesame oil. And then the rest of those sesame seeds. So let's go back to our spicy red sauce. I want a couple of spoonfuls of that on my beef. Then a couple of spoonfuls of our soy sauce mixture. Just enough to kind of flavour that beef. The rest I'm going to use later. Just mix that through. Now no need to leave that beef for any longer than a couple of minutes. We're doing the easy version here of course. I'm going to add a little bit of oil straight into a wok. Before I put my beef in, I'm going to add some garlic. I'm going to grate in some ginger. In goes my beef. Straight away you want to spread that beef out in the pan. So as much of it comes into contact with some heat as possible. I like to leave the beef at this point just for about half a minute here. To let some of that colour start to develop. Now we just stir-fry until that beef is cooked. It's really important that we don't overcook the beef here. Because that's when we're going to run into some tough, hard bits of meat. This is just barely cooked. I'm going to get that beef straight out onto a plate. Now you should have a delicious pool of sauce in the bottom of your pan. Do not waste that. Let's pour that straight over the beef. Now the vegetables. Don't be a hero here guys. Just pick up a whole bunch of sliced veggies that you've got at your local supermarket. I've just got some carrot here. You can get sliced mushrooms usually. I've opened up a bag of baby spinach. Of course, my local supermarket, even though I live in Thailand, didn't even have bean shoots today. So I picked up some of these beautiful green pea shoots. It doesn't really matter. Whatever floats your boat. So back in the wok. I'm not even going to bother cleaning this guy. Just going to get some oil straight in. Then my mushrooms go in. And my carrot. Now the baby spinach. It looks like a lot, but of course it'll wilt down. I just love the fact that you can throw in a whole bunch of vegetables here and really feel quite virtuous about your dinner, which is always good. Now in goes the rest of that stir-fry sauce. I love that smell of the sesame oil as it hits the pan. Beautiful. Now for some of those pea shoots. And that's it. So just take yourself a bowl of rice. You could use microwave rice or even get some delivered. Add an egg on top. Some of that veg. You want some crunchy cucumber. I just love that kind of fresh crunch there. Some of that beef. Some kimchi. Definitely something that I always keep in the fridge. Because wow, the flavour and it packs a punch. Love it. And then some of our spicy red sauce. Wow, just take a look at that bowl. If that's not a thing of beauty, I don't know what is. You've got beautiful vegetables, that beef, that egg. Let's have a look. Now I like to give everything a mix. That way I get kind of the ideal mouthful with every bite. Oh, so looking forward to this. Wow, I am so loving that. I mean it tastes like you're sitting in a Korean restaurant. But a lot easier to make than the restaurant version. Who doesn't love a good chicken soup? Ah, so comforting. And this one's spiced up with some Korean flavours. This soup has the most amazing, complex, beautifully savoury, spicy flavour. And yet it is dead simple to make. So first up, we just want to start with some chicken. I've got some chicken thigh here. I'm just going to heat my oil up in my saucepan. And then season your chicken with some salt, with any kind of soup. It's always good to make sure you're layering the seasoning and the flavours. That'll make things more rich and beautiful at the end. Okay, so my oil is looking pretty good. I'm going to add my chicken pieces in. Now you could also use chicken breast for this. And you're just waiting for that chicken to sizzle away and get a little bit of colour. So now we've got a nice base flavour of some chickeny goodness in there. I'm going to add my garlic. And my onion. And then just give this a couple of minutes. I just want that onion to soften up a little bit. And I also want some ginger. Just peel that with a spoon. I'm just going to grate that straight in there. I'll give this a stir. And just give it a couple of minutes to sizzle a little. So that that onion softens up, becomes nice and sweet. Ah, and already this is smelling amazing. Any time there's ginger involved in a soup. Ah, so comforting. We also need some carrots. I'm just going to throw those in. And then here come our big Korean flavours. I'm using a Korean chilli paste called gochujang. It's basically a fermented chilli paste. You can get it in the Asian section of most supermarkets now or order it online. I find it adds a really beautiful, deep, almost kind of smoky chilli flavour. It's good stuff. As you can see, my little container here is nearly empty. I use a lot of it. So that goes in here. Mix that through. And then I've got some kimchi. I'm going to use both the juice and the kimchi cabbage as well. Because the juice has loads of flavour, so don't waste that. And then some soy sauce. Mix that through. And some chicken stock. You know what's great about this is there are so many big flavours in here. No one will notice if you're using store-bought for this. Just let this come up to a simmer. I'm going to put the lid on. And just let those flavours work their magic for about 30 minutes. Now this is smelling truly amazing. Yum. What we want to do here is check for seasoning. That's so good. The savoury flavours from the kimchi and the chilli paste. And it's got a nice little spicy kick. So good. Does need just a little bit of salt though. Now I'm just going to pull my chicken pieces out so I can shred them. See that chicken is really soft. It's just falling apart. Now add the chicken back in. Now if you're a meal planner and you like to freeze your soups, then I would do it at this stage now before you add the tofu. I find the tofu doesn't really handle the freezing and then reheating that well. So let's get to our tofu. I'm using a medium firm tofu. It's not the silken tofu that will break up completely in the soup. This is a medium one and I just want to cut it through the centre. And then into strips. And then into cubes. Now just gently encourage these into your soup. And just a gentle stir here just to warm through the tofu. Just let that simmer for a couple of seconds. And we are ready to indulge in this amazing spicy yummy soup. Just a little sprinkling of spring onion. And there you have it. This is one chicken soup you guys are not going to want to miss. And don't forget to turn on the notification every time I'm cooking something delicious.