Kimchi Jiggae / Kimchi Stew

This is by far my favorite Korean dish.  Spicy, savory, hot and addictive.  Kimchi stew is a very common, humble everyday dish enjoyed by every Koreans.  You can make it with minimal ingredients or add meat, seafood, even more veggies of your choice.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup of chopped kimchi and kimchi liquid, preferably older kimchi

1/2 medium size onion chopped

2 tbsp Gochujang or more if you like it spicy  (Korean red pepper paste)

1/2 of package of tofu, cubed.

*4 oz of pork chopped to small pieces.   (I used pork stew meat) 

2 cups of water

1/4 cup of chopped scallion.

2 tsp of canola oil

1 tsp of sesame oil to drizzle at the end

Directions

Add oil to pan, saute onion till its translucent.

Add pork, saute till no longer pink

Add Kimchi and Gochujang.  Saute incorporating everything.

Stir in water and tofu and bring to boil.  Lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add chopped scallion and drizzle with sesame oil and serve with steamed rice.

Serves 2

*Pork is traditional but you can certainly add any meat.  or none if you prefer.

Kale Kimchi

Inspired by my cousin Sujin, I recently made an improvement to the kale kimchi recipe.  I simply added both daikon radish and regular small red radishes and slice them half rounds instead of julienned.  Also used red Russian kale instead of curly kale.  (the radishes were salted for 20 minutes and rinsed before being added to kimchi paste)
Red Russian kale is slightly more bitter which reminds my of chong gak kimchi.  (baby daikon radish kimchi with the greens)  I personally prefer the red Russian kale over the curly kale.