When people ask me what I’m doing in Korea, I like to joke that I am here to learn Korean and eat my body weight in kimchi. There are many kinds of kimchi (a taxonomy for which has just been added to the top of my to-do list), but when I say kimchi, I mean the prototypical version made from Napa cabbage. Any meal that comes with a little on the side is a good meal. Any restaurant that has a jar on the table is a good restaurant. If you believe the propaganda, kimchi burns fat, builds muscle, improves concentration (for learning), regulates moods (to cure depression), and promotes household harmony.
Unfortunately, there are limits to how much kimchi I can eat in a sitting. Unless I’ve a bottle (or two) of soju and possibly some potato chips or roasted peanuts as well, the sour, pungent, spicy, cold nature of kimchi means it is best in small doses. Unless you cook it.
Hot kimchi is an entirely different beast. Throw it on the grill when you are barbecuing thinly sliced pork belly, throw some in your fried rice, or make a pancake out of it and the flavors of the kimchi blend with the other foods into a rich and savory tapestry. However, the absolute best way to eat kimchi is in its stewed form, aka kimchi jjigae (김치찌개).
I like to go to the cheap little Korean restaurants where there is a small range of classics–such as bimbimbap, fried rice, dumplings, noodles, etc–but I invariably order the kimchi stew. Even among the holy trinity of stews–kimchi, soybean paste (된장), and tofu–there is no god but kimchi and I am its prophet. Soybean paste stew is a classic, but best served along with BBQ (where it reportedly serves some health benefit). Tofu is nice, but you usually get some nice chewy tofu in your kimchi stew, whereas the tofu soup is usually a silken tofu.
A bowl of kimchi stew is an indescribable experience from start to finish. It’s served boiling in a stone pot, so you whet the appetite from the array of banchan before you can start picking out pieces of softened, steaming kimchi leaves with your chopsticks. The broth is hot, salty, savoury, spicy, sour, and pungent, checking off every flavor except sweet. You take a spoonful of rice every so often to clear the palate and enjoy the heady rush of flavors once more. Halfway through the bowl you give up on all pretense of restraint and dump the rest of your rice into the pot so that every grain can become infused with scarlet goodness. On the bottom of the bowl, you discover a secret trove of pork you weren’t expecting like an unannounced prize in the cereal box.
Kimchi stew is also super easy to make since the kimchi pretty much provides all the seasoning you need. Oh sure, a teaspoon of salt, a dash of pepper, and maybe even a spoonful of chili or soy sauce will help if you dilute it by adding too many vegetables to the pot–I recommend sticking to just Chinese onion (大葱) and some kind of large, mild green pepper on top of the tofu, pork, and kimchi base.