kindkit | Jun. 14th, 2014

Today I cooked the pork and kimchi stir-fry I mentioned before. SO GOOD. I've never used gochujang before, but now I want it in everything.

A few notes: I halved the recipe, although I probably used about a cup of kimchi, in part because I like kimchi and in part because the original recipe calls for such a large amount of meat to a small amount of kimchi that I do wonder if it's been adapted a little for western tastes. Oh, and I ended up using a whole onion even in the halved recipe because I hate using half an onion. (The problem is the other half. No matter how well you wrap it, it will tend to be stinky and will also dry out quickly. And I can't just throw away perfectly good food.) I omitted the bell pepper and jalapenos.

I used pork loin because that's what I had around (but I'll bet it's even better with pork belly). Because pork loin cooks fast, I changed the order of the steps. I cooked the onion first on fairly high heat until it had softened and was barely beginning to brown, then added the pork, then the kimchi when the pork seemed about half cooked, and the carrot and green onion in the last minute of cooking.

And I am eating the delicious result, along with recipe and a cucumber salad dressed with rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar, as I type this. It's spicy but by no means too spicy for my taste (and I used the full amount of gochujang, plus extra kimchi as I said). The chiles are balanced by the rice, of course, and by the complexity of the sauce which has sweet and tart flavors as well. Seriously, this is the best thing I've eaten in quite a while.