Best easy Korean dish to make – 1. Kimchi mandu (Kimchi dumplings)

Happy Lunar New Year! (and Happy New Year in general) – As per our family and general South Korean tradition, I really wanted to make some delicious Korean manduguk 만두국 (dumpling soup) and most importantly get Kieran involved in making these!

As part of my new year’s resolution, I’ve decided that I’m going to share my Korean recipes. I am not a professional chef by no means, but I have been doing a lot of cooking ever since I left home for uni and now I’ve graduated, living my doctor life, the main joy has been eating nice food (hence this blog). I have always enjoyed cooking but with lockdown x 3 (dear oh dear), I find myself cooking more often than I usually do and have been enjoying the improvements to my culinary skills.

Hopefully they are simple enough to follow and I’ll include links of ingredients that I use when possible and also photos and videos of us cooking!

Growing up, we normally make it with tofu and pork along with lots of different veg and I always remember it taking absolutely ages. It’s a proper process mainly because my parents make it very properly but also because we tend to make at least 200 dumplings and freeze them so we can have save them for later! Unfortunately, we tend to not have time nor energy to make 200 between us two so we ended up making around 35 dumplings to last us few days 🙂

Ingredients!

Mandupi 만두피 (Wrapper for the dumpling)

Flour (all purpose plain flour)
Water
Salt

Mandusok 만두속 (filling for the dumpling)

Kimchi 김치 (400g) – sour the better, so if you leave kimchi for a while in your fridge rather than straight after you make them, they tend to further ferment and eventually become sour. For kimchi mandu, it’s better to have sour version rather than the ‘well fermented’ one. But tbh, it doesn’t really matter!
- I used my parents’ kimchi which they made for me, but you can buy them. I recommend going to nearest Asian supermarket and getting one of these from the fridge:

Minced pork (240g) – if you’re veggie, skip this!
Glass noodles (100g) – not essential but would be good to have!
- Nongshim Miga Glass Noodle 500g

Beansprouts (100g) – not essential but would be good to have!
Spring onion (60g)
Minced garlic 3 tbsp
Korean chilli flakes 1 tbsp
- NONGSHIM Red Chilli Pepper Powder, 1 x 500 g
Oyster sauce 3 tbsp
- Lee Kum Kee Panda Oyster Sauce 510 g (Pack of 2)
Sesame oil 2 tbsp
- Ottogi Sesame Oil 500ml
Brown sugar 2 tbsp
Dark soy sauce 2 tbsp
- Sempio Jin S Soy Sauce 930 mL/31.4 fl oz

Cooking instructions!

Getting your ingredients ready – prep time

Make the dough, wrap it in cling film to prevent air getting in and put it inside the fridge for couple of hours
Soak the glass noodles in water – again for another couple of hours
Once you’ve done the above steps, get yourself a bowl (you’re essentially going to throw in all the mandusok ingredients in here!)
Put the kimchi in the bowl and make sure it’s well cut (diced) using scissors (it helps to prevent it getting all leaky on the chopping board or staining the wooden chopping board you have!)
Chop the spring onions finely (around 1cm apart and place it inside the bowl)
Chop the beansprouts finely about 1cm long and put them in the bowl
Put in the minced pork, brown sugar, minced garlic, chilli flakes, soy sauce and sesame oil
Get the soaked glass noodles, make sure they are nicely chopped – 1cm length and add it to the bowl
Now just mix – in Korea we always use gloves and mix it with our hands. I don’t know why, I think this is to ensure ingredients are mixed thoroughly?! You can use whatever utensil you find useful obvs.
Now your ingredient preparation is ready.

Making mandu!

Get yourself a working environment – we used our dining table because ultimately you’re going to be using this surface to make the little wrappers to fill the dumplings.
Get yourself a tray/plate/chopping board – something that you are going to have your finished products displayed
Ensure this tray is well sprinkled with flour – to ensure the finished mandu don’t stick to the surface
Have a small bowl of water prepared (- to ensure that you are going to be able to fold and close the wrapper together later)
Roll the dough and cut it in small chunks to make wrapper – we don’t own a roller so ended up using a rum bottle ha
Then roll this further and try to make it into a circle