Kimchi Fried Rice - Simple and Easy ( 10 minutes approach)

Just tell me, who would not like something nice that can be prepared quickly and easily?. Especially we live in a fast paced world with children and career to juggle. The idea is simple, simple ingredients, simple steps and voila! Without much delay here is the 10 minutes approach!

Here is the result!

Okay here are the ingredients!(serves 4) - as you can see it requires very simple ingredients.

1 - 4 cups of cooked rice (yields roughly 650 gm cooked rice)
2 - 1 table spoon of cooking oil
3 - Pork Belly - 200gm (for Kosher concerned readers, you may use de-boned chicken thigh)
4 - 250 gram of Kimchi (we recommend Chongga Kimchi - the no.1 Korea brand - it makes a difference)
5 - 4 cloves of garlic
6 - 2 stalk of green onion (or spring onion)
7 - 2 tbsp of Chongga Kimchi Sauce (I call it a TOS - touch of spiciness, add more if you want it spicier)
8 - 1 tsp of sesame oil

Here are the steps:

1 - Chop up the spring onion, garlic, Kimchi, pork belly (sliced).

2 - Heat up the wok, add the cooking oil and a pinch of salt (a very small pinch)
3 - Add in the garlic, stir fry to light brown (tips - the edge start to turn brown)

4 - Add in the pork belly, stir fry to cook (tips - the color of the meat turned white)

5 - Add in the rice then Kimchi, stir fry till it's mixed up well

6 - Add in the Chongga Kimchi Sauce and sesame oil, stir fry till it's mixed up well
7 - Lastly add in the spring onion

By the time you are done!

Masterclass tips 1
Traditional kimchi fried rice normally will fry the Kimchi first, in contrast to our method of frying the kimchi last. Why is that so?, we prefer to retain the crunchiness of of the Kimchi in the fried rice, whereby if we fry the Kimchi first, it will become too soft and blended with the rice (some likes it that way).

Master classs tip 2 and 3
Chongga brand of Kimchi is the no 1 selling brand in Korea, it is very difficult to go wrong unless you are very capable of distinguishing different grade of Kimchi. For situation where you will need to chop things up, choose "Poggi" Kimchi which is whole kimchi, it tends to be juicier and you can chop it into the size that you need.

The Kimchi sauce (we call it TOS - taste of spiciness) is another brilliant product from the boys from Chongga, it allows the fried rice to acquire a distinctive taste of Korean kimchi without using a large quantity of Kimchi, normal recipe will require approx 500gm of Kimchi, it's not about skimping on Kimchi (I love kimchi btw), it's about making space for other ingredients, e.g. more pork belly, fish cakes, eggs and the list goes on.

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Kimchi Rice Roll (Kimbap)

The Korean Drama of Year 2014 - "My Love from the Stars" is a big hit in South East Asia Countries. The Korean food wave begin again in the whole region. Every lady in my office was telling me, who & who went for Korean food during the weekend. Heard someone saying they went for the fried chicken & beer, Korean BBQ, Kimchi pancake...etc.

Hmm...........when come to Korean food, I believe the 1st thing come into most of our mind is Kimchi. How can I make something very quickly that can fix my Korean food craves? Simple & easy, I need a quick fix.. So I decided to make Kimchi Rice Roll (Kimbap).

Good quality Kimchi need to strike a balance in between - sourness, saltiness & spiciness.I choose my favorite store bought Kimchi - Chongga - Poggi Kimchi (made by using the whole napa cabbages).
The positive point in buying the whole cabbage Kimchi is we can cut it into the size we want follow the recipes requirement.We can cut the Poggi Kimchi in long strips for the rice roll. Remember to drain the poggi kimchi before cutting.

Ingredients for 4 servings:
Simple Sticky Rice:
400g of Japanese rice or Korean rice (Fat short grain sticky rice)
50ml of sushi rice vinegar

Method:
1) Soak the rice for at least 30mins- 1 hours.
3) Rice to water ratio is normally 1:1.3
4) Cook the rice in rice cooker follow the white rice cooking instructions.Once the rice cooked, do not open the rice cooker immediately, let it sit for a while & cool down in the rice cooker for 30 mins. Then, mix in the sushi rice vinegar. Then, cool the rice further to room temperature. You can choose to use fan to make this faster.

Ingredients to assemble the Rice Roll;
2 Japanese cucumber , remove seeds, cut into long strips
Some Poggi  Kimchi cut into long strips. Remember to drain the juices of kimchi. Too much liquid is no good.
1 pkt of Seaweed sheet (usually come in 10ea)
Divide the cool white rice into 4 or 5 portion equally (each portion is about one bowl of rice)

Method:
1) Lay the seaweed sheet on the sushi mat, then lay one portion of the rice on the seaweed roll.
2) Use a fork to flatten the rice evenly on the seaweed sheet. Leave 1 cm at the end of the sheet.
3) Lay 2 strips of cucumber & 1 strips of Kimchi  on the rice at one edge. Put extra 1 strip of cucumber will make the flavor even better.
4) Roll from the edge firmly until the end. Press firmly when finish rolling.
5) Then cut the rice roll using a sharp knife.

Feel free to try with other ingredients for more variations e.g. eggs roll, crab sticks....etc. Enjoy!

Tips: How to keep the seaweed sheets to stay crispy for next round? The secret is to keep it in the freezer. Use a zipper bag to seal the balance seaweed sheets & keep in the freezer.

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