Kimchi Jjigae

Ingredients

• 400 g well-fermented kimchi, roughly chopped
• 300 g pork belly, sliced thin
• 300 g medium tofu, in thick slabs
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 tsp gochugaru
• 1 tbsp gochujang
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 700 ml stock or rice washing water
• 4 tsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 5 spring onions, cut into lengths

Method

1. Use old kimchi

   This dish needs kimchi that is properly sour — weeks old, fizzing, past the point you would want it raw. Fresh kimchi makes a flat, sweet stew, and there is no substitute for the fermentation.

2. Fry the pork and kimchi together

   Render the pork belly in a dry pan until the fat runs and the edges crisp, then add the kimchi and onion and fry hard for five minutes. Frying the kimchi in pork fat before any liquid goes in is the step that builds the depth.

   8 min

3. Bloom the chilli

   Stir in the gochugaru, gochujang and garlic and cook for a minute in the fat until the oil turns deep red.

   1 min

4. Add liquid and the kimchi juice

   Pour in the stock along with any juice from the kimchi jar, add the soy, and simmer 15 minutes. The jar juice is free flavour and most people pour it down the sink.

   15 min

5. Tofu, gently

   Slide the tofu in whole slabs on top and simmer five minutes without stirring, so it warms through without breaking up.

   5 min

6. Finish

   Add the sesame oil and spring onions and take it to the table bubbling in the pot, with rice.