Kimchi jjigae: the Korean kimchi stew that needs old kimchi

Kimchi jjigae is a Korean stew of sour, well-fermented kimchi simmered with pork belly or tinned tuna, tofu and spring onion, and served boiling in the pot it was cooked in, with rice alongside. The recipe below takes about half an hour on the stove. Its one real requirement is old kimchi.

Kimchi soup or kimchi stew?

In English it is sold as both. In Korean it is a jjigae, and the word tells you what arrives. A jjigae is roughly half solid ingredients and more strongly seasoned than jeongol, the broth-heavy hot pot, and it is often shared from one vessel in the middle of the table. Lighter vegetable soups take the suffix guk, and heavier, thicker soups are usually called tang.

So kimchi jjigae is closer to a stew than a soup: salty, dense, and meant to be eaten with plain rice rather than drunk on its own.

The kimchi has to be old

The Korea Tourism Organization describes the standard version plainly: aged, sour kimchi more than six months old, boiled with large chunks of pork, with the flavour getting richer the longer it cooks. Korean Bapsang’s recipe says the same thing in four words, the older the better, and Maangchi’s asks for well-fermented kimchi.

Fresh kimchi still makes a stew, just a flatter one. Korean Bapsang’s fix for kimchi that is not sour enough is a little vinegar. The opposite problem, kimchi that has gone too sour, is balanced with a teaspoon or two of sugar. The kimchi recipe on this site explains how a jar gets from fresh to sour in the fridge.

Use the juice too. Both recipes cited here pour kimchi brine into the pot as an ingredient.

Kimchi jjigae recipe

The quantities are from Korean Bapsang’s kimchi jjigae by Hyosun Ro, which serves two. The method is summarised below.

Ingredients

• Fully fermented kimchi, 2 cups packed, cut bite-size
• Pork belly or other fatty pork, 4 oz (about 115 g), cut bite-size
• Gochugaru, 1 to 3 teaspoons
• Garlic, 1 teaspoon minced
• Cooking oil, 1 tablespoon
• Kimchi juice, ½ cup, if the jar has it
• Water or broth, 2 to 2½ cups
• Tofu, 6 oz (about 170 g), sliced about 1 cm (½ in) thick
• Scallions, 2, chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Heat the oil in a small to medium pot. Add the kimchi, pork, gochugaru and garlic and stir-fry over medium-high heat for 5 to 7 minutes, until the kimchi has softened and the pork is cooked through.
2. Pour in the kimchi juice and the water or broth. Boil for 5 minutes, then turn the heat to medium, cover, and simmer for about 15 minutes.
3. Add the tofu and scallions, season with salt and pepper, and boil for about 5 minutes more, until the tofu is hot all the way through. Serve while it is still bubbling.

Frying first is one school, not a rule. Maangchi’s kimchi stew, which serves two to three, puts everything but the tofu into the pot at once: 1 pound of kimchi with ¼ cup of its brine, ½ pound of pork shoulder or belly, a sliced onion and two green onions, a teaspoon each of salt and sesame oil, two teaspoons each of sugar and gochugaru, a tablespoon of gochujang (the same paste that sauces tteokbokki), and 2 cups of anchovy stock, which her recipe makes first from dried anchovies, radish, kelp and green onion roots. It cooks covered for 10 minutes over medium-high heat, gets a stir, and then cooks another 10 to 15 minutes over medium with half a package of tofu laid on top.

Pork, tuna or vegan

Pork

Pork is the standard. Korean Bapsang asks for belly or another fatty cut, Maangchi for shoulder or belly, and the Korea Tourism Organization’s description has large chunks of it.

Tuna kimchi stew

Chamchi kimchi jjigae swaps the pork for a tin of tuna. Korean Bapsang’s version leaves out the pork, adds one can of tuna with its oil at the point where the liquid goes in, and boils it for 10 to 15 minutes. It is a popular camping dish in Korea.

Vegan kimchi stew

Mushrooms and extra vegetables take the place of the meat, and the stock is water or a vegetable broth rather than anchovy. The catch is the kimchi itself: most is seasoned with fish sauce and salted shrimp, so a vegan stew needs a vegan kimchi to start from.

Spam and budae jjigae

A pot with Spam and hot dogs in it is a different stew, budae jjigae, which grew out of US military food supplies in the Korean War era. It is covered in our guide to Korean hot pot.

How it is served

Boiling hot, usually in a stone pot, with a bowl of rice for each person and banchan around it. When several people are eating, the pot is shared. The Korea Tourism Organization notes that Koreans eat it as a meal and that it also goes well with a drink.

It also turns up inside other meals. At Palsaik, the eight-flavour pork belly restaurant, kimchi jjigae is one of the stews offered with the grill set, and our guide to Korean food culture sets out where a stew sits in an ordinary meal.

Where it came from

Kimchi existed as a non-spicy pickled vegetable dish well before the Joseon era. The red, chilli-seasoned kimchi used here only appeared after chilli peppers reached the peninsula in the middle of that period, so the stew as it is made now is younger than kimchi itself. None of the sources we checked names an inventor or a first recorded recipe.