This is where my love for korean dramas and food ties in well. Every time I watch one of my many korean dramas, there’s always a scene where someone’s eating and having a good time with all that delicious looking korean food. Kimchi fried pancakes, kimchi soup, bulgogi, Korean barbeque and the list is endless. After watching so much of it, I crave the food featured in the shows even if I’ve never tried it.
One of my favourite Korean dishes is Kimchi jiggae, a sort of soup or stew made with kimchi. Kimchi is essentially a fermented vegetable, most commonly made from napfa cabbage, and is loaded with vitamins as well as a healthy bacteria called lactobacilli which helps your digestion system. It has long been known to be a “health food” thus said.
Unfortunately I like the taste of it much more than I like the health benefits so I eat lots of this fermented cabbage. I throw it into kimchi stews and add meat to it and it comes out deliciously spicy and sour with plenty of umami.

Kimchi jiggae ingredients: Onions and garlic, tofu, pork slices, spring onions, enoki mushrooms, kimchi, tomatoes and milk
Ingredients (Serves 3-4 pax)
- 400g of kimchi
- 1 packet of pressed tofu or you could substitute this with egg tofu, sliced into manageable pieces
- 1/2 a large green onion, diced
- 1 stalk spring onion, chopped
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
- A handful of enoki mushrooms, bottom chopped off and mushrooms cleaned
- 1 tomato, quartered
- A packet of your favorite slice of meat, could be that shabu shabu meat or chunks, whichever you prefer just make sure it is room temperature. I use sliced pork meant for shabu shabu.
- 1/2 cup of full cream milk
- 5-6 cups of chicken//beef stock or water (I use water, but to get a richer taste you could use stock), enough to cook the ingredients in
- Chilli padi if you like your stew spicy
Cooking Instructions
- Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a sauce pan to fry your garlic and onions
- Once your onions are slightly translucent, add the tomatoes and stir fry
- Add the kimchi, milk and stock/water to the pan and let this simmer for about 3-5 few minutes.
- Slowly add your meat to the pot, then your mushrooms. If you opted for a chilli padi then add to the pot here. Let this simmer for 3-5 minutes.
- Slide your tofu into the mix and let this cook for a couple of minutes more.
- Scatter spring onions over the top and serve in its pot. If you have a nice stone/earthenware pot you could use that instead to make it all the more pleasing to the eye.
- Eat with fluffy white rice or translucent rice noodles
You could add some noodles to this to make it a one pot meal or have it as a carb-less meal