Aloha from Korea: Foodie's Guide

Recently, I planted some vegetables on my lanai. I decided to eat super fresh vegetables after I've watched Food Matters. However, how I can make yummy salad out of  cilantro + lettuce + green onion + basil + arugula mixture?(all really small portion) I thought a lot since I'm not a big fan of cilantro. The answer was make it spicy so that it can mediate the strong cilantro smell. Oh...it was really good. You can try this dressing on any kind of salad. Baby vegetables, baby sprouts, cucumbers are recommended. Ingredients> Soy sauce(shoyu)-4T vinegar-2T sesame oil-1T roasted sesame seed-1.5T agave syrup(alternative sugar)-1T red pepper powder - 1.5T~2T This kind of salad is great with meat. Please try this when you have a BBQ party. You will wow for this. It is simple but very refreshing. I'd like to have a garden which is five times bigger than this. This weekend will be all about planting~ So great too have these fresh vegetables everyday. I will buy my favorite...

In my childhood, my mom was really strict about my meal. She hardly ever gave me processed meat or burger or sweet dessert. She even made mayonnaise and fish cake at home. Whenever I watch food documentaries such as Food matter, Food, INC... I think of my mom and her love and healthy recipe. Rice cake is one of my favorite snacks. The great thing about rice cake is its simple ingredient. Gluten free, no oil, less sugar, no baking powder!! My dad bought a rice cake machine from Japan during his trip since I loved rice cake. Making rice cake was quite complicated even with the machine. However, I'd like to introduce you an easier way to make rice cake. Honestly, my mom's recipe is better but I believe you don't want to spend 10 hours on making this small treat.   With microwave and sweet rice flour, you can make fresh, warm rice cake in 10 minutes. Yes, believe me, 10 minutes. It is faster than you go to a supermarket and buy one. Let's start! <Ingredients> Moc...

Aloha! 🌺 It’s Jihye in Seoul. Growing up in Korea, my favorite dessert was never cake or cookies. It was always  Tteok  (Korean traditional rice cake, similar to Japanese Mochi). However, making traditional rice cake from scratch requires a lot of time, special equipment, and intense physical effort. Decades ago, Korean immigrants who moved to Los Angeles missed their homeland's rice cakes so much that they invented an ingenious, easier alternative using an oven. That’s why we call this beloved treat  "LA Chapssaltteok" (LA Rice Cake) ! It’s chewy, completely  gluten-free , and incredibly easy to make—just mix and bake.  Let's get started. 🛒 Ingredients (For a 9x9 inch baking pan) Mochiko (Sweet Rice Flour / Glutinous Rice Flour):  2 cups Baking Powder:  1 tsp Chopped Nuts:  3/4 cup  (Walnuts, pecans, or almonds work great!) Coarse Sweet Red Bean Paste:  250g (8.8 oz) Evaporated Milk (e.g., Carnation):  1 can Cooking Oil:  1 ...

Aloha, everyone! 🌺 It's been ages since I last took care of this blog. :( I sincerely apologize to all the wonderful people who have supported me here. I've been super busy posting on my Korean blog ( blog.naver.com/alohayang ), where I share a lot of information about cooking and amazing restaurants. If you ever visit, feel free to ask me to translate any post you are interested in! Today, to make up for my absence, I'd like to share an absolutely mouth-watering Spicy Oxtail Stew recipe. Do you usually enjoy eating oxtail soup? Koreans do too! But our recipe is very different. Since oxtail is a really rich and heavy cut of meat, bold Korean spices are the absolute best match for it. Once you try this, I promise you will completely forget your old oxtail recipe with tomato! 📚 A Quick Note Before We Start Cooking oxtail originally takes a long time to make the meat incredibly soft and tender. However, the recipe itself is quite simple. Please try cooking it while you rea...

I submitted this recipe to the Hawaiian Airlines in flight meal recipe contest. Winning is not my aim. I hope many people will be interested in Korean food because of me :) Please go to the link and vote for me if you like this recipe! Hawaiian Purple Sweet Potato and Korean Spicy Chicken < ingredients for 4people > chicken 1.6 pound, Hawaiian purple sweet potato 0.8 pound(you may use potato instead), onion 0.4 pound, carrot 0.15 pound (you may use pumpkin, mushroom, white redish, chesnut...) < sauce > gochujang(Korean pepper paste) 6 table spoon, shoyu 4 table spoon, rice wine 4 table s, Mirin 4 table s, pepper powder and minced garlic and sugar and honey each 5 tea spoon, ginger powder 1/2 tea spoon, pepper, 7ounce of water. < How to > Cut all the ingredients for one bit size. Mix all the sauce ingredients. Put all together in the pot and boil it on medium heat with cover. If you have sesame oil, add one spoon when you finish cooking. Ser...

After I moved to Hawaii, I like Kimchee(Korean spicy cabbage pickle) even more. Whether you like raw Kimchee or not, you still have chance to fall in love with a lot different kind of Korean food made from Kimchee. Kimchee fried rice, kimcheechigae(Kimchee soup), kimchee jun(jijimi), kimchi pork, kimchee cream cheese...etc Today, I'd like to tell you my kimcheechigae(kimchee soup) recipe. Kimcheechigae is one of the most famous dish in Korea. It is not a fancy food however people just love it and miss it as a soul food. You can make kimcheechigae with pork, spam, tuna, mackerel. My recipe is pork kimcheechigae. Spam and canned tuna and canned mackerel are way easier than this. I guarantee all of you can make this perfectly :) Let's start! Oh! before we start, the most important part of making Kimcheechigae is getting the "right" kimchee. Please visit nearest Korean owned supermarket to get the Korean authentic kimchee. And wait until it's sour. Well mad...

Aloha, everyone! 🌺 There are a lot of different ways to cook beef in Korea. Most of the time, we use pear juice and soy sauce to marinate the beef and wait at least 3 hours to tenderize it. When I make traditional Bulgogi (Korean-style marinated beef), I also wait that long for a deeper flavor. However, today, I will give you a much easier and faster recipe . You can eat this just 15 minutes after you marinate it, as long as you use fresh, good-quality beef! You can cook it on a pan or a small tabletop gridiron with a portable gas burner. I usually cook it on the gas burner right at the dining table with a regular pan. Sometimes it is even more fun than outdoor grilling! Let's try this!!! 🛒 What You Need (Ingredients) Fresh Boneless Kalbi (Boneless beef short ribs): 1.5 lbs Mirin (Sweet cooking rice wine): 2 Tbsp Shoyu (Soy Sauce): 3 Tbsp Honey (or Sugar): 2 Tbsp Sesame Oil: 2 Tbsp Minced Garlic: 5 tsp Black Pepper: A pinch Toasted Sesame Seeds: 4 Tbsp (Optional, for ga...

Aloha! 🌺 Have you tried making my Magic Sauce from the last post? I hope you made enough of it, because I have 5 more amazing new recipes you can make with that sauce! As you know, Bibimbap is a very famous and yummy Korean dish. However, cooking traditional Namul (steamed and seasoned vegetables) takes a very long time because you must cook and season each vegetable separately. Even for me, it takes about two hours to prepare all the traditional ingredients! So, here is a better, faster recipe for us. I am going to use fresh vegetables instead of steamed ones. And, no wonder, I’ll be using my Magic Sauce! Now it only takes 15 minutes to make a yummy, fresh bowl of Bibimbap!!!!!! 🛒 What You Need (Ingredients) Cooked Rice: 1 small bowl Lettuce (any kind): Shredded Cabbage: Shredded Carrot: Shredded Egg: 1 (fried sunny-side up!) For the Tuna Sauce: Magic Sauce: About 2 Tbsp (Check out my [Magic Sauce Vol.01] post!) Sesame Oil: 1 Tbsp Canned Tuna: 1 small can (oil or water...

Aloha! 🌺 If you like Korean food, you must love this amazing dish. We call it Jeon (or Jun / Jijimi). There are many different kinds of Jeon, and today I used Asian chives (Buchu) and sea mussels (Honghap). You can easily substitute the chives with green onions, and use shrimp or clams instead of mussels if you prefer. I used a ready-made Korean pancake mix because it is the easiest way for beginners to make yummy Jeon. It’s a perfectly balanced mix of flour, starch, salt, and seasoning. A lot of my international friends who tried making Jeon told me that it was really difficult to get that "right, crunchy" texture. When I first made it, I faced the exact same problem. But now, I know the secret to making it perfectly crispy every time. Let's start! 🛒 Ingredients Korean pancake mix: 1 cup (Look for the brand "Beksul" at your local Asian grocery store!) Egg: 1 Cold water: 4/5 cup (Egg + Water should equal exactly 1 cup of liquid) Asian chives (Buchu): 1...

Aloha, everyone! 🌺 You guys might be curious about the title— Magic Sauce . Although it's a bit embarrassing to say my own recipe is "magical," I promise you, it truly is! Once you make a batch of this base sauce, you can create various different dishes in no time just by adding a little roasted sesame oil, ketchup, or vinegar. My Korean blogger friends who tried this sauce told me that it was literally magical and they absolutely loved it. I hope you like this as much as Koreans do! Let's begin with the most basic and beloved Korean street food: Tteokbokki (Dukboki) . 🛒 What You Need (Ingredients) For the Magic Sauce: Gochujang (Korean Red Chili Paste): 2 Tbsp Sugar: 1 Tbsp Shoyu (Soy Sauce): 1 tsp Minced Garlic: 1 tsp Sesame Seeds: A generous sprinkle (if you have them) 💡 Chef's Golden Tip: I highly recommend making this sauce 10~15 times more than the recipe so you can store it and use it for other meals! It actually tastes much better after 24 hour...

Aloha! 🌺 It’s Jihye in Seoul. Many of my friends who want to cook authentic Korean food at home always tell me the same thing: "It's so hard to buy the 'right' Korean ingredients!" I completely understand. When you walk into a Korean grocery store (like H-Mart), there are hundreds of brands, endless types of sauces, and everything is written in Korean characters. If you can't read Korean, you might fall into the trap of buying copycat brands that taste completely different from the authentic ones. Today, I’m sharing my ultimate guide to the most reliable and famous Korean grocery brands that you can easily find in the USA and globally. I will update this list often, so bookmark this page for your next grocery run! 1. The Global Giants (You Must Know These!) Bibigo (비비고)   If there is one brand you must remember today, it's Bibigo (owned by CJ). They have taken the world by storm. They are most famous for their Mandu (Korean Dumplings) , which are absolu...

Aloha! Welcome to my delicious journey. 🌺 I'm Jihye, a native Korean living in the vibrant city of Seoul. Having spent years living in Honolulu and London, I’ve tasted diverse cuisines around the world, but my heart (and stomach!) always brings me back to authentic Korean food. Professionally, my background is in graphic design and art direction. However, to spend more precious time with my adorable child, I recently transitioned to freelance work. This beautiful new chapter of my life gives me the flexibility to pour my creative energy into what I love most: exploring Korea's culinary scene and running this foodie blog! You might wonder why a Korean blogger says "Aloha." It’s a piece of my Honolulu days that I carry with me, representing the warm, welcoming vibe I want this space to have. What will you find here? Not the typical tourist traps. I share the hidden gems where real locals eat—from bustling fish markets to premium Hanwoo BBQ spots. I also share authent...