How to Make Kimbap

That's how you eat ramen, by the way. You have to slurp it. So good. Oh my gosh. Today we're making Korean comfort classics, kimbap and lemon ramen. Kimbap is my favorite like picnic snack. It reminds me of my grandma. You can think of it as a Korean rice rolled in seaweed. This is not Korean sushi. Nothing's raw inside. Everything inside is cooked. It's pickled and this is very classic to Korean food. This is a dish that is a little prep heavy, but once you start going, it goes very, very quick. I'm going to julienne my cucumber, carrot, similar shape as the cucumber, pickled radish. You can buy it already cut for you. Then our tuna, mayonnaise, salt, pepper. I'm sure you've made a tuna salad before. It's exactly that. Deli ham, of course, American cheese, and we're going to make some omelets to go inside the kimbap. You see like a little peaking of omelet. Five eggs, season. Okay, so we're going to do a quick cook on the eggs and the carrots. Literally the quickest saute. When your carrot starts to bend a little, that's ready to go. We're just making like thin egg crepes basically. Americans, when you think of quick fast food, it's like a slice of pizza. To Koreans, that's kimbap. So my memories of eating it as a kid, always at a picnic. That's my fondest memory. Okay, so I just did a quick flip and that's ready. I'm actually just going to put it on the board. All right, here we go. We want to go quick. This is not like, you don't have to get all delicate about this. More flip. Okay. While this is cooling down, actually, let me go get my rice. Okay, I have some rice in the rice cooker, already cooked. Okay, sesame seeds and then sesame oil. Now, this is not sushi rice. Sushi rice has vinegar and sugar. There's a saying where when you move into a house, the first thing that you put in into that house is a rice cooker because it brings you prosperity and luck. So whenever I move, the rice cooker comes with me, comes into my car. I'm in the car with the rice cooker and the first thing that I do when I go into a new home is I put the rice cooker in my kitchen and I don't know, it's done pretty well for me. Are we done about the rice cooker? Because I had like 20 more comments to make about the rice cooker. Just kidding. I'm kidding. Anyway, so getting back into kimbap and I'm just gonna do a quick like rolly roll like that just so I can like do nice slices. It's a perfectly sliced omelet. I'm just gonna go into my one little space over here and then one of these guys. It's a bamboo mat. It's a kimbap mat. The seaweed sheet that I'm using, it's literally these sushi or these seaweed sheets and then there's a shiny side and then there's like a rougher side, right? And you're gonna always put the shiny side down. Here we go. Look at our beautiful mise en place all here ready to go. Rice goes down. I would say this is about a cup of rice and if the rice starts sticking on your fingers, no fret. A little dip in water again and then it'll stop sticking. Now let's fill it some cheese. I mean there's no like real order. You do how you please. You know it's just like you're making so many. It doesn't really matter what you do and each one will be like different and that's fun too, right? Each bite is different. Got the egg. Get some of that carrot. I'm always thinking about color because you eat with your eyes first. It's actually a very important traditional element in Korean food is the different colors and it signifies different things in the culture. So color is very important. It's always something I'm thinking of and then of course the pickled radish. This is the fun part when you roll. You roll and kind of you have to be a little confident when you do it. Just go for it. You know what I mean? You know how I just went for it? Just go for it and then you're going to use your bamboo mat to secure everything together and then you just kind of like pull and this helps tighten the roll. That way when you cut into it, there's no like air pockets and everything's like flying out and even if that happens, it's okay. The next one will be better. You learn from your mistakes. So totally fine if you mess up. Sometimes there's like little indents. That's fine. You just roll it out. There's like your beautiful kimbap roll. That's the first one and to finish it, we're just gonna brush a little sesame oil onto the roll and not only does this give obviously delicious flavor but makes it really shiny and beautiful. There we go. That's roll number one. What I'll do sometimes is like do a variety of different proteins and some I'll just do tuna. Some I'll mix it with the tuna and ham. Sometimes I won't add the tuna. It's like choose your own adventure. It's kimbap. Kim means seaweed and bap means rice. So I made some with ham and cheese. I'm gonna make some with tuna. There we go. See? All coming together in one beautiful bite. First one I To me, that bite brings back so many different memories. I don't know. It's one of my favorite things. I just like love it so much and look how pretty it is. It's everything you want. The vegetables are super crunchy. It's just so lovely. I can't think of anything like better than this. It's like nutritious, delicious, easy to eat. It's like would you rather have a tuna salad sandwich or tuna salad kimbap? I don't know. You tell me. Leave a comment. So good. The tuna one just hits different you know for me at least. I'm gonna plate the rest of this up and we're gonna get started on our lemon ramyeon. Okay. Okay. Ramyeon. Ramyeon is Korean instant noodles. It's not ramen. This is ramyeon and it's always instant. Nowadays you see so many different types of ramyeon hacks online. This is my take on it. I love doing a lemon ramyeon. So it's basically lemon and ramen put together and trust me when I say this is so unique. If you need a different experience with ramyeon, I say try this one. We're gonna start with a little olive oil. Some garlic. Just gonna grate this in. Then we're gonna take our ramyeon and you have your noodles and then you have your two dried seasoning packs. We're gonna go ahead and add both of them in there but I like sautéing the the spice packet in oil with a little garlic because it gives it like that much more flavor. The lemon which is kind of the heart of this hack. I'm gonna use the whole zest of the lemon. About two and a half cups of water goes in while that comes to a boil. So the yolk of the egg. The yolk. You can hear it. It's almost coming to a simmer. Okay so good amount of cheese. That looks good to me. Okay yeah just in time. Water started boiling. I'm gonna then drop my noodles and then while the noodles are cooking just gonna bring the parm, lemon, egg yolk mixture together. What we're gonna do is we're gonna temper the egg. So we're gonna get some of the broth and kind of slowly mix it into the egg yolk and we're tempering the egg yolk because if I were to add the egg yolk straight into this hot boiling broth it's just gonna curdle and cook right away. I want a creamy broth, right? So I'm slowly tempering. Okay the noodles are almost done. You can tell they're a little al dente. And pour this into the... You can see the color of the broth has completely changed. No curdling happening. See how creamy and delicious and wonderful that looks? Since you guys are here with me we'll plate it. Make it look nice. And then I'll just do one kind of beautiful slice of lemon just to reinforce that this is a lemon ramen. We'll do like a little parsley. A little parsley action. Never hurt nobody. And then of course I'm gonna finish with a little bit more parm. Just a little bit. And then we have our kimbap pairing so nicely with it. I feel like I need to taste it. Try a little bit of the broth first. Wow. That's so crazy. You know how simple that was? Literally it came together in less than five minutes but tastes so totally unique and different. Sometimes when you're eating kimbap you need some sort of like broth-y situation. Ramen is perfect with it. I have to taste it though. That's how you eat ramen by the way. You have to slurp it. So good. Oh my gosh. Ramen kimbap always brings me back to home. It's like the comfort classic. It's what I think of when I think of like comfort food. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Please leave a comment. I know you're gonna try this. Please tell me what you think. Oh so good. I have to finish this bowl. Sorry guys but I'm gonna eat this and you're gonna leave. Bye!