Kimchi Fried Rice

Ingredients:

• Day-Old Sticky Rice (or chilled in the fridge for 3-plus hours)
• Napa Cabbage Kimchi
• Gochujang
• Sesame Oil
• Soy Sauce
• Fish Sauce
• SPAM
• Egg (either scrabbled in or fried)
• Green Onions (optional)

For my first recipe, I decided not to pull from Dok Suni: Recipes from My Mother’s Korean Kitchen, but instead I thought it more fitting to begin by cooking a recipe taught to me by my own mother; kimchi fried rice (김치볶음밥). This dish, very near and dear to my heart, will always remind me of my family and a lively kitchen. Taught to me by my mother in my early teens, though the dish culturally belongs to my paternal grandmother’s side of the family, the steps quickly became ingrained in my memory, both muscle and mind, and is a way to feel connected even from a different state. To echo V. V. Ganeshananthan’s piece The Measurements from What We Hunger For, “[b]ecause I know it by heart, it makes any kitchen familiar, too, in the cooking” (Shin & Ganeshananthan, 2021). 

Though a long-since unconscious process, this time around cooking the kimchi fried rice required a bit of improvisation. When I went out Saturday afternoon to collect the few missing ingredients from my fridge, I didn’t have the time to go to the Korean store Arirang out in Lacey, which is usually a twenty-five-minute drive, so I drove the ten minutes down Harrison Avenue to Capitol Market, another locally beloved Asian grocery store. I too love Capitol Market, with their wide array of staple ingredients for many Asian ethnic groups and inexpensive pricing, but their kimchi was a disappointment for me. Looking into the small fridge, reading the ingredients list left me puzzled; what were things like tamarind, wine, and carrots doing in kimchi? Mushroom seasoning and galango? Short on time, I bought the not-kimchi with much skepticism and told myself I could doctor it up at home. To save the dish, I had to deviate from the above ingredients list to achieve the taste of kimchi.  

To see what I was working with, I tasted the “kimchi” with some hesitation. My household has eaten kimchi for as long as I can remember and in recent years we’ve learned to make our own, so I can say with confidence that I have spent years learning what it should taste like and smell like. This “kimchi” did not smell right when I opened the lid, and the flavor, while not bad at all, was decidedly not kimchi, and not even Korean. The smell wasn’t completely off, with a distinctive red-pepper scent that can only come from Korean chili peppers and a slight tang when you breathed deep, but the flavor was a mess. There was a sweetness that didn’t belong, the taste of cabbage was strong, a clear sign of a lack of fermentation. With one taste and one smell, I immediately noticed which flavors and ingredients were missing. There was no bite from ginger, no umami from dashi broth and salted shrimp, definitely not enough gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder) or garlic, and no sourness. The flavors—and ingredients—were much more in-line with Vietnamese cooking. I had my work cut out for me having to make this “kimchi” into kimchi fried rice. 

Something special about cooking this past Saturday was that my older sister, Miranda, was in town visiting me. Her being only two years my senior caused us to be quite close to each other, so I was ecstatic that she would be staying for three days. I knew, with her in town I just had to make us kimchi fried rice for dinner. So, while I began working on chopping up the “kimchi” and heating up my pan, my sister sat at the island, providing suggestions as I went along. It was nice to have her with me, and not only because she’s a better cook than I am, but because I missed sitting and talking with her when she would cook for me. Though our roles were reversed this time, the familiarity of our voices floating through the kitchen, accompanied by the sizzle of frying foods and the aroma of spice, salt, and meat, made it feel as though I were home.

The “kimchi” was the first thing to go into the pan since it takes the longest to cook. I can’t speak to how other families cook kimchi fried rice, but I was taught to add in the rice once the thick parts—the white of the cabbage—began to turn translucent. Of course, there were a couple added steps this go around. Once the “kimchi” began sizzling, I threw globs of gochujang (something I’d usually only use once the rice was put in if I wanted more spice) and showered the “kimchi” with gochugaru and powdered ginger, trying to correct the flavor. Once those added seasonings were stirred in and the “kimchi” became translucent, I added in my day-old rice, fish sauce, sesame oil, and some black pepper. I couldn’t find any gluten free soy sauce at the store, to accommodate my sister’s gluten allergy, so I had to forgo it. As I tasted the dish, I knew I wouldn’t be able to completely fix the flavor—the tamarind and carrots in the “kimchi” were too strong to mask. Eventually, I resigned myself to my fate and added in the SPAM, cut into small cubes, and continued stirring until everything was cooked. Transferring the finished rice into a large bowl, I added sliced green onions and combined them in. I decided against scrabbling in the eggs as Mom taught me and instead took my roommate up on their offer to fry us all eggs. At the end, what I had was a dish not quite familiar, but not wholly dissimilar to my family’s well-loved kimchi fried rice. There was a strange sweetness and a faint hint of tamarind, but it still tasted good even though the flavor wasn’t quite Korean. Although the kimchi was disappointing, the company and time spent cooking was not, and sometimes that’s all you can ask for.