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December 18, 2012 10:38 AM

Learn how to cook Korean food with Aeri Lee and Maangchi.

Maangchi
In 2007, amateur chef Emily Kim began posting videos of herself cooking traditional Korean dishes on YouTube, under the name "Maangchi" ("Hammer" in Korean). When viewers asked for recipes, she created a website with a Beginner's Guide to Korean Cooking. She's also posting "Korean Food Vocabulary" video tutorials, so her followers will know how to pronounce and write the names of the dishes they're making.

Youtube Playlists
* Most Popular Recipes
* Desserts and Snacks
* Fish and Seafood
* Kimchi and Pickles
* Meat Dishes: Beef, Pork and Chicken
* Non-Korean Recipes
* 1 Bowl Meals, Noodles, Porridges
* Side Dishes (serve with rice)
* Travel Cooking
* Vegetarian
and
* Korean Food Vocabulary

More
* Guide to Ingredients
* Korean Grocery Stores
* Forum
* Blog
* Podcast
* Flickr. Also: the "I cooked Korean food with Maangchi's recipe" group.

Amusingly enough, here's the Toronto Globe and Mail on her, back in 2010:

She never trained in a culinary institute. She picked up cooking tips from watching her family and by experimenting in the kitchen. Yet she boasts nearly six times as many YouTube channel subscribers as Martha Stewart.

Aeri's Kitchen
In 2008, Korean mom Aeri Lee created Aeri's Kitchen. Like Maangchi, she also posts Korean cooking videos and language lessons on YouTube and her website.

Ms. Lee is from GwangJu, South Korea. Her site is co-run by her husband and mother-in-law, who are (non-Korean) Canadians. It's divided into six categories:
* Korean Food
* Western Food (From her mother-in-law)
* Ingredients
* Korean Lessons
* Miscellaneous

More
* Flickr

posted by zarq (26 comments total)

AMAZING!!! Thanks for posting. January will be a month of me staying at home for the most part so i am thrilled to have something to explore and help me make delicious food.
posted by josher71 at 10:50 AM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Not content with ~80% of our brains, zarq has now staked a claim to our taste buds. Well done.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 11:09 AM on December 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ha! Thanks. Enjoy!
posted by zarq at 11:29 AM on December 18, 2012

Delicious! I live right next to a huge Korean grocery store. I know where I'm going on my way home from work.
posted by Arbac at 11:55 AM on December 18, 2012

Because I watch a lot of the dramas, I've become really intrigued by Korean food. But it seems so alien to everything we eat that I've hardly even heard of most of the ingredients, never mind the strange style in which every meal seems to consist of soup, kimchi and a million side dishes. So I'm really grateful to be able to explore this whole thing.

And even if I never get to make any of these dishes, if I ever get sent to jail, I'm absolutely eating that big wedge of tofu the day I get out.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:04 PM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

AMAZING. Too little time, so many recipes!

My first exposure to KFC was making this recipe from Andrea Nguyen.

So. Freaking. Good.
posted by cacofonie at 12:09 PM on December 18, 2012

We are close friends with two Korean families, and get to eat this great food all the time.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:10 PM on December 18, 2012

Carbonara Gangnam style! Hee. This is awesome.
posted by clavicle at 12:13 PM on December 18, 2012

Maangchi's recipes really are good. Korean food in North America is pretty lacklustre, so it really pays to make it yourself.
posted by smorange at 12:31 PM on December 18, 2012

WHERE IS THE HOTTEOK
posted by roger ackroyd at 12:50 PM on December 18, 2012

I've been a fan of both of those sites for quite a while, and Korean food is crazy tasty. I spent all of every day eating when I visited Seoul and lost weight. It's pretty easy to cook, Korean seems more flexible than many cuisines, you can adapt and it's still damned good.
posted by Iteki at 1:50 PM on December 18, 2012

I always assumed that Korean food was an acquired taste. I grew up eating it, so it's comfort food where I'm concerned, but I'm surprised that it seems to be getting trendier and more popular. Figured that our predilection for fermenting the shit out of our food would be a turn-off.

And now I'm craving cheonggukjang...
posted by imnotasquirrel at 1:56 PM on December 18, 2012

Korean food may be lackluster in the rest of North America but its pretty good here in Los Angeles.
posted by Bookhouse at 2:03 PM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

The recipe for Korean chili paste starts with two gallons of water and ends with an earthenware jug that you leave out in the sun for months to ferment. They are not messing around.
posted by mhum at 3:52 PM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love this. Korean food isn't something I have much experience with, and the BBQ places I have been have disappointed.

Now I am craving food. And an earthenware jug.

(I did mis-read the title of this post as "Learn how to cook Korean food with Ang Lee and the Monchhichis though).
posted by Mezentian at 4:18 PM on December 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

This is the hotteok recipe I've been experimenting with lately, mainly in varying the proportion of glutinous rice flour and wheat flour. I always seem to end up with an incredibly sticky dough, but the end product is so much more delicious than from the pre-made mixes ...

My one disappointment with the Maangchi and Aeri's links is that they don't really address regional differences, making it seem like there is one monolithic "Korean" cuisine.
posted by needled at 4:26 PM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I will be trying some of these. I never eat out at Korean restaurants. Why, you wonder? I'm a vegetarian.
posted by unliteral at 4:44 PM on December 18, 2012

May as well ask, but I suspect I know the answer:
If you don't have glutinous rice flour, can you sub in any old flour?
posted by Mezentian at 6:07 PM on December 18, 2012

I love kimchi and put it on everything but I've never tried to make it. Rainbow Grocer in San Francisco sells homemade and my favorite tiny little hole-in-the-wall hipster Korean fusion place John's Snack & Deli also sells homemade kimchi so why bother when I can get it straight from a Korean grandmother. And although John's is known for their bulgogi burritos, their regular Korean food is good too.

I'll have to try some of these recipes. Thanks for posting this.
posted by shoesietart at 6:31 PM on December 18, 2012

She is very big in Japan as well... among Japanese home cooks who don't speak Korean and depend on her for the inside dope on their favorite ethnic food.
posted by zaelic at 6:58 PM on December 18, 2012

Big Maangchi fan here, especially her kimchi recipe. My husband loves it so much he hauled the office refrigerator home so we'd have room for more!
posted by HotToddy at 8:18 PM on December 18, 2012

This is amazing. There is a Korean grocery store trip in my future.

My in laws live in an area that had a Kia car plant open and one of the results I never considered before was the entrance of at least two, if not more, Korean restaurants into an area of Alabama and Georgia where it would generally be unlikely to find them otherwise. It made for a delicious side effect of large scale industry moving into an area.
posted by ndfine at 10:09 PM on December 18, 2012

Here we just call it "food" :)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:25 PM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, but there you call PSY "music".

Ha! Take that*!

(Actually, seriously, I assume all these recipes are traditional, but there is also modern Korean? And forms of fusion cooking?)



(Yes, I know we called Take That music here. I have made your rebuttal for you.)
posted by Mezentian at 11:20 PM on December 18, 2012

Right, well, guess I'm going to the local Asian supermarket this afternoon.
posted by SomaSoda at 9:54 AM on December 19, 2012

I eat kimchi straight out the packet. I will eat a whole packet straight. It turned out my last poor landlady, having put a fridge in my room, could smell it so badly when i left, kimchi long gone and never long in there or open, that she had to scrub it out several times. Sorry!
posted by maiamaia at 3:09 PM on December 19, 2012