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.