Olympics Fare: Korea Edition 2018

This was a challenge for me. England was easy. Russia, not too hard, lots of root vegetables. Brazil was up my alley. But I know nothing about Korean food. It actually turned out pretty well considering that.

I didn't do my Olympics pizza. Brian was out of town on the opening ceremony evening, and it was one of those nights where I couldn't do everything. I'm still waiting to do the fruit bagels or colored icing on donuts for the Olympic rings someday.

The first meal I did was Korean BBQ chicken. It was easy and probably not very authentic because it wasn't very spicy, but it was good.

After the gimme meal was done, I had to actually put effort in. I bought a few supplies.

It turns out that kimchi is pretty good. I was nervous after I opened it and it was bubbling and weird looking. Brian and I both liked it and ate it with both the next meals.

Next was japchae, Korean stirfry. I Americanized it by using ground beef (that got way over cooked). This being Vermillion, my best option for noodles was rice noodles. I think Koreans would use mung bean or sweet potato noodles, but I was happy to find the rice noodles. My back up was to use Ramen. It isn't very good-looking, but it tasted good. Brian finished cooking it while I rushed off to parent teacher conferences, so he gets some credit.

Last was mandoo, Korean dumplings. It was very similar to egg rolls. I, of course, couldn't find mandoo wrappers, so I used won ton wrappers. This was also good. I used ground pork, cabbage (coleslaw mix), mushrooms, rice noodles, and my homemade soy sauce for the stuffing, and I steamed them. It felt way more healthy than deep frying.  I have like 25 wrappers left that are supposed to be used within 2 days.

And that's all for Korean food. I wanted to do bibimbap. Look how nice and compartmentalized it is, plus I like eggs. I ran out of time and motivation. That's also part of my Olympic food tradition.

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