Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking: Authentic Korean Recipes for Home Cooks, from Bibimbap and Bulgogi to Kimchi and Classic Banchan

I'm new to Korean food, but I am an experienced cook. Our home is very open and fascinated by other cuisines and cultures and, since we lack the funds for real world travel, I often endeavor to track down truly authentic recipes to bring the fun closer to home. If you're like us, then this book is for you. If you're even interested in Korean cuisine, this will be a great start for you. The entire book is worth sitting down and reading as Maangchi put forth every effort to explain the history, culture, traditions, and even health information behind each dish. She takes the time to explain how Koreans take their meals, which is helpful because her book is organized in a way that most Americans might find confusing for not knowing any better. Everything outside the central bowl of rice, soup, or porridge is considered a "side dish", including the meat dishes, which most Americans regard as central to every meal. I would recommend not skipping all she has written in the front of the book before you begin and make a shopping trip to your local Asian market to get as many ingredients as you can from her shopping list. I tend to be well stocked in a variety of spices, condiments, and other elements, but I did have to make note to buy special items for these recipes. All this said, the recipes themselves are actually quite simple and most do not require a large list of items. The main flavorings seem to be centered around soy sauce and other soy ferments. That brings me to what I love most about her book - the FERMENTS! Several wonderful ferment recipes are provided in her book, including the soy bean paste. I plan to undertake that as soon as my soy beans are ready for harvest, but if you're not up to that (and don't want to wait up to a year to enjoy some homemade Korean food!), I recommend Wholly Doenjang products. They are the real deal, live ferments, and very flavorful. I would probably just go ahead and order their soybean paste, soy sauce, and hot pepper paste with this book. You'll be glad you did! I also recommend Red Boat fish sauce if you're not ready to take on dried anchovies or squid just yet. To me fish sauce makes a fine substitute. I hope my review is helpful, especially if you're new to Korean food. I was looking for authentic Asian and Oriental cookbooks when I came across her book. I'm glad I took the plunge, because we're in love with what I've turned out so far!

I've been a fan of Maangchi's website and YouTube channel for a couple of years. I think she is charming and down to earth, and she makes everything she does seem easy and accessible to the rest of us. I was so excited to get this cookbook, and I'm not disappointed! This book is beautiful to look at, with color photos and brightly colored pages, as well as informative and fun to read. Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking is so much more than a cookbook. It's a true primer on authentic Korean cooking and I wish I had this book when I began cooking Korean foods. A glossary of ingredients includes photos, descriptions, and food names in both English and Korean. Info on acceptable substitutes is also available when possible. Tips and techniques are dotted throughout the book, making everything guess-free. Included is also a fascinating introduction to the basics of traditional Korean meals and the culture that surrounds them. This book is also filled with color photographs of finished recipes, as well as some step by step photos. I think there are over 400 photos in all! Like many people, I prefer cookbooks with photos to entice me into trying them. Yes, it's food porn. And it's so good! The recipes are varied and include many basic Korean mainstays, as well as some unique recipes. I was particularly thrilled to find recipes for making kitchen staples such as homemade gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste) and rice liquor. I make kimchi all the time, which I learned from Maangchi's YouTube channel, but never thought about making other fermented foods and pastes. Now I will! I live on a mostly plant based diet, with occasional seafood. Many of the recipes in this cookbook include beef and pork, but plenty are meatless or include seafood. Everything is rich in vegetables and many can be easily adapted to a meat free meal. In fact, that's one of the things I appreciate about the Korean diet - plenty of vegetables at every meal. If you are a meat eater, you'll find more than enough to keep you happy, including the secret to that famous Korean fried chicken everyone loves so much. Tonight we made vegetable leaf wraps with rice and apple dipping sauce, and stir fried kale with soybean paste. These were recipes that I already had ingredients for, since I couldn't wait to try a few new dishes. The apple dipping sauce was very new to me and I really enjoyed it. Finely diced sweet apples were combined with savory soybean paste, red pepper paste, sesame oil, garlic, and scallions. I spread a small amount of this on leafy greens and rolled it around a bit of rice for bite sized packets that made my mouth burst from all the flavor! Even my granddaughter loved this one. The kale recipe was also new to me. The seasoning mixture was similar to what I use on spinach, and it was surprisingly good on the kale. Cooking unfamiliar foods can be intimidating, but "Real Korean Cooking" will give you the knowledge and confidence to create a meal that is authentic and delicious. If you are unsure about anything, her online community is there to help. I'm much more pleased with this cookbook than I expected to be. I highly recommend it!

WANT TO LEARN TO COOK KOREAN FOODS? TOO INTIMIDATED TO TRY & DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START? Start here! European-born, former Chef who loves to cook all manner of world cuisine here: this is an easy to use, clearly written, perfect Korean cookbook good for both a novice AND an old used-up chef! I have been following the Author's website for a while now, & finally decided that I needed her basic book. Glad I got it! I love Korean food, & have prepared many traditional recipes given to me by Korean families: they & I all agree that it's very authentic, with adaptations always provided for ingredients possibly hard to find in the US. I especially loved the lesser known fermented foods & even drinks. I am lucky enough that I have an H-Mart not far from me (a Korean grocery store chain in the US, at least on the Left Coast), so have both ingredients AND tools such as clay fermenting pots easily available at decent prices. I love fermented foods, as we eat them almost daily where I'm from, same as most Asian countries, & have been preparing a variety of kimchis (kimchi literally means submerged vegetables, i.e. salted & fermented) for years, & it was nice to find a few new versions in this book. I love ferments so much that I actually bought a Korean LG Kimchi / Ferment refrigerator, with different drawers for the various stages & types of ferments, dedicated to JUST all my ferments! Currently, I have Makgeolli - a fermented, slightly alcoholic rice drink - brewing in a clay pot. Can't wait to taste it in a few days! I have tried the commercial ones, and they are ok, but nothing beats a home-made one, with no weird & unnecessary ingredients, right? Mind you, this book is clearly written for an American readership: all measurements are given in Imperial system. If another edition is ever written, my suggestion would be to include Metric measurements, to make it easily usable by a wider audience The pictures are beautiful & informative, often showing not just the finished product, but the steps to get there, which will be very helpful to novice cooks. While there are some personal stories & commentaries on the recipes, historical context, & traditional uses, do not expect one of those maudling, cooking-blog-type long writings that seem to goo on and on and on and... She gests down to the recipes very quickly. If you want more writing before a recipe, follow her posts on her website! All in all, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book to all who love Korean foods, & want something more authentic, easy to prepare than stuff you find at very Americanized restaurants.

This is my first review for a cookbook. Let me say that I married a Korean-American man. We have two children. My youngest, loves, spicy food and my oldest doesn't (she came out like me ha). This book has mostly spicy dishes in case people aren't aware of the Korean culture. Spicy foods are welcomed, but they are non-spicy options as well. I made Tteokbokki for my husband, his favorite food, for the first time and he said it was as good as his mother's 🤐 I stock up on Tteok so when he's having a bad day at work I make some Tteokbokki for him! It's so easy and I'm able to make that for him and a different dish for the rest of us without comprising time or extra effort. The book is well edited. Her photos are gorgeous, her ingredient references are amazing. I learned more from her than I did my amazing mother-in-law. She always cooked so fast & eyeballed everything because she was able to so I never could quite understand what she was doing. However, this book gives a thorough layout of ingredients and instructions as well as answers any questions you might've had with that particular recipe. My husband, who is super critical with cookbooks thought that this book was well edited, written & authentic. HOWEVER, the table of contents DOES NOT match up with the page given. So looking for recipes via table of contents just won't work, in that aspect of editing they failed, but you can look it up through the index if anything. Overall this cookbook, is my first and only Korean cookbook I own and I don't see that changing anytime soon! It's all I need! It's so well thought out. I'm so glad Maangchi was able to write her own recipe book and furthermore it was a recipe book that was fabulous and that my family can enjoy and so my children will always feel connected to their heritage. Fantastic!

Although I grew up eating Korean food, I never learned how to cook Korean food from my mom. I learned most of the Korean dishes I make at home through maangchi's website. Almost all of her recipes turn out delicious and my mother in law (who is Korean as well) says the food is delicious. When I found out she was going to have her own cook book, I was excited at the prospect of having new recipes not available on the website. So when I found out most of the recipes (80-90%) of the recipes are already on the website, I was a bit disappointed. Strangely enough, I find the recipes in her cook book harder to follow than her online recipes. I find her online recipes much more detailed, which is helpful for a newbie such as myself. The names of certain items were changed as well, probably to suit a more American audience? I found this a bit confusing since the same dish I had made had different names in the cook book and found myself double checking. I did enjoy the front section which shows the pictures of the ingredients that she uses. I also liked that most recipes had bright colored pictures. Overall, I'm still happy I bought Maangchi's cook book. She has been such a great help in navigating my Korean cooking adventures.

I've been following Maangchi''s You Tube videos for a little over a year -- she's really engaging and fun to watch. Two or three years ago I discovered Korean food at a local Japanese/sushi restaurant run by Koreans, who had a Korean side menu I eventually ordered from. (They didn't really advertise it much, and would just hand out the other menu at first.) I loved their japchae appetizer and their seafood soup! They went out of business at the end of 2014. Suddenly, I've been really wanting to make Korean foods! Yes, I miss dining out Korean. I pre-ordered this book, and it is excellent, and her photos draw you in for the bite. Although she takes credit for food photography for the book, I suspect her husband does the video work on her You Tube videos. Recipes range from simple to complex, and Maangchi provides alternate ingredients for most items if you don't live near an Asian grocery. Foods in this cookbook will suit omnivores, pisceverians, vegetarians and vegans, with enough things to make all categories happy. Maanchi discusses meals typical for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and provides you with info about Korean cooking tools. So far, I'd call this the best cookbook I've viewed released in 2015. (In ANY category.)

I've been a fan of Maangchi and her cooking tutorials for a very long time 🙂! I began learning from her website years ago and her Youtube channel, I'm grateful to own her wonderful books both full of amazing recipes. From her book 'Real Korean Cooking', the 'Korean Fried Chicken' is a favorite, it's absolutely DIVINE! The added bonus is Maangchi's fun and quirky personality, which makes her video tutorials an absolute blast!

I have been a fan of Maangchi for years now. I’ve always appreciated her social media and I’ve purchased all her books. She has such a charming personality, and it comes through even in her books. I’ve made several recipes in this book, but the on recipe that especially made me want to write this review was her gimbap (or kimbap). You see, my wife and I tried some for the first time at a Korean restaurant located in our local Korean market. One bite, and I knew I needed to learn how to make it. Gimbap is sort of similar to sushi rolls, except that it is more toasted sesame oil forward and it contains a much wider variety of non-fish ingredients. In the case of the recipe in this book, it contains fish cake and egg as its protein. For my version, I chose to also add avocado and braised burdock root. Our family loved it! We had some left over the next day, and I followed Maangchi’s instructions to dip it in egg and pan fry it. IT WAS NEXT LEVEL GOOD. In fact, we liked so much that I will probably prepare it this way every time I make it. Every one of the recipes I’ve made from this book have been home runs. If you are looking for straightforward, authentic Korean dishes, this book might be an excellent option for you!

Un libro completo sulla cucina coreana, che ti guida alla preparazione dei piatti in modo semplice. Ha una parte iniziale dedicata agli ingredienti che non possono mancare quando si vuole inizare a cucinare cibo coreano a casa con degli accorgimenti per sostituire alcuni ingredienti con altri, quando non si riesce a reperirli. Le ricette sono spiegate con dovizia e ci sono le foto dei vari step per la preparazione. Il libro é in lingua inglese.

Para quem quer se aventurar na culinária coreana eu recomendo muito esse livro, é tudo bem explicadinho. A única não muito boa foi a demora na entrega mas enfim...

This cookbook is fantastic, written by a fabulous YouTuber influencer in Korean cuisine. I am not Asian, and always loved the cuisine, but never dared to attempt any cooking of it. After watching Maangchi's cooking videos, and saw how much fun she was having, I decided to get her cookbook, and was not disappointed. The recipes and explanations are excellent, clear, and insightful. I have been cooking up a storm! It will open to you a world of flavours, colours, and techniques, and I had trouble previously boiling water! I am so grateful for this. Also, I can see that more experienced cooks/chefs will enjoy the wonderful addition of these tasty dishes to their culinary repertoire. This is a MUST-HAVE cookbook, but don't let it sit on the shelf! USE IT!

Rekommenderas om du vill laga riktig autentisk koreansk mat på ett enkelt sätt

I have now both Maangchi's cookbooks. Both are great, a lot of really tasty recipes. You find some of the recipes from internet also and a lot of her videos, but there are many more in her books. And I also want to support her by buying the books because her fantastic videos lead me cooking Korean dishes many years ago. Spicy and tasty!