Gukbap is an extremely popular Korean dish consisting of guk (국) meaning soup and bap (밥) meaning rice. You can find gukbap restaurants all over Korea, but it’s not so easy to find abroad. So here we’ll give your our easy gukbap recipe that you can try for yourself at home.
This recipe is for Kongnamul Gukbap (콩나물국밥) a version of gukbap made with soybean sprouts. Gukbap is a healthy, warming dish that is easily customisable to suit all allergies, preferences and dietary needs. Traditionally, the soup is made with a Korean anchovy stock, but here we will use vegetable stock as a vegan friendly alternative. However, this recipe will work with any stock so you can follow the same recipe using your preferred stock choice.
Ingredients
Serves 2, Cooking time: 30 minutes
- 7 cups of vegetable stock
- 1 cup of cooked rice
- 300g (roughly) bean sprouts
- 60g sliced onion
- 2 minced garlic cloves
- 3 chopped spring onions
- 80g (roughly) chopped (vegan) kimchi
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons of Korean hot pepper flakes
- 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- Bring the stock to the boil in a large pan and add the bean sprouts, minced garlic and salt. Let the bean sprouts cook for around 5 minutes on a medium/high heat.
- To the same pan now add in the cooked rice, onion, kimchi and spring onion (keeping back some spring onion for garnish at the end).
- Add in the pepper to taste
- Boil this all together for around 7 to 8 minutes until the onion looks cooked.
- Once the onion is cooked, turn off the heat and add in the sesame seeds, sesame oil and Korean hot pepper flakes.
- Transfer to individual bowls and garnish with the remaining spring onions.
Traditionally, gukbap is served in an earthenware bowl which can be placed directly on the stove, and will keep the soup hot whilst eating. However, this is somewhat hard to find outside of Korea so this recipe was made using a pan, but if you can get your hands on a Korean earthenware bowl you’ll achieve the best results. You can follow the same recipe above and instead, put half in your bowl and cook directly on the stove.
If you do not have a local Korean or asian supermarket you might find it hard to get your hands on Korean hot pepper flakes or Gochugaru (고추가루), but this can be substituted for cayenne pepper.
Finally, remember that gukbap is very customisable, so you can also add in any vegetables or ingredients that you may have lying around. Also, you could try switching white rice for brown rice for a healthier dish.
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Featured Image: ©Gukbap, Inspire Me Korea, 01.05.19, inspiremekorea.com
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