This is located in Las Vegas’ Chinatown and a great place to buy Korean/Japanese ingredients. They also have locations in WA, CA and TX.
My 5 day YouTube Creator Camp was an awesome experience! I really had a great time at the camp and learned a lot of things, and met some great people.
Before going, I expected that they would give me a lot of advice about what to change in my videos. I expected they would have a lot of direct advice for me. But the camp was not like that at all. Instead, their message was that I was doing a good job, and that I was doing a lot of things right.
They showed me a lot of new techniques and ideas, and left it up to me to choose which ones would be useful. On YouTube, there is no clear way to “do it right,” we’re all deciding as we go. However one thing that everybody agrees is that keep doing what we do with lots of passion. I realized that I was not the only one who spends so much time on producing videos.
I want to thank YouTube team again for providing us with such a wonderful opportunity and I’m honored to be one of the 25 YouTube NextUp Creators. At the ending ceremony, I got a $35,000 check! Yay, it’s time for me to plan on my global cooking show by visiting my readers!
One day, we went to a Chinese restaurant. They served this amazing looking whole fish dish. Tasty!
Lunch at Google cafeteria. So colorful and super tasty!
Lunch at Google cafeteria
“Hurry up, many people will be lining up to taste our patbingsu (shaved ice with sweet red beans and fruit) soon!”
Ice for 100 servings! Several people shaved it with the small shaver. Scratch faster and make snow mountain! : )
ooh yummy yummy homemade sweet redbeans. You can’t make patbingsu without this because “pat” is red bean (adzuki beans) in Korean. : ) I made this and kept in my fridge before going to the camp. On the day of my presentation, I brought this to Google. The video of that day and the recipe will be posted soon.
These 2 men were my team! On the left, pdrop. on the right, Travis TheReceptionist. Both of them live in Los Angeles. These 2 became my good friends!
“Next, put some shaved ice”
With Michelle Phan, After talking and listening to her, I found she’s very down to earth and super smart!
with Peter from pdrop Mission #1! let’s clear everything here! booya! : )
With Byan Odell from YouTube channel BryanStars “ouch Bryan! You are still smiling even though you have severe burning scar on your face!”
The first day of camp, I went to Brooklyn with my 2 team members. I ran into one of my readers at Subway! She said, “Are you maangchi?” She said she made bunch of Korean dishes! I was surprised! I forgot to ask her name! If you happen to see this photo, please let me know your name through email.
Posted Saturday, May 28th, 2011 at 7:30 pmThese are some important messages for all of my readers about recent changes that I made to my website. Maybe you noticed already?
Photo upload
When I first made my photos page, I thought it would be very easy for people to use Flickr to upload and manage their Korean food photos. Then they could add them to my group and I could display on my website. Easy!
The group now has 250 members, and I really appreciate their input, but Flickr has a very strict policy on new accounts, and for newer members it was confusing and took a long time, or their accounts were never approved by Flickr, which made us all very frustrated!
The reason I post readers’ photos on my website is to encourage people to cook, so this frustrating Flickr process was very discouraging. So now you can use Flickr or upload to my website directly, and they will be included to the photo page.
When you upload your photos, be sure to fill out the recipe link and let us know if and how you modified the recipe, so that others can learn. I see that so many people invented their own recipes based on my recipe. They make vegetarian kimchi, add or skip some ingredients according to their taste. I love all of them and I’m very impressed.
If you belong to my Flickr group and have no problem with posting your photos, go ahead, it’s your choice. So far 1,400 photos are posted on my group page!
Search
I changed my site search to use Google, and when you start typing something, it will try to guess what you want based on what other people search. Try it out! Type something and it will give you popular suggetions.
Grocery Store maps
This enhancement is the most thrilling part for me! hooray! : ) I really appreciate all of your submissions, they are a big help for those who are looking for Korean ingredients in their area.
The Korean grocery shopping directory has gotten bigger and bigger with more stores added every day. Now that it’s getting so large, it needed to be better organized, instead of one big page. So I divided it into sections by country, and to make it easier to find stores I added maps to each country. For example here’s Singapore and here’s the USA. Please add your local store to it! It gets more useful every day.
Faster Forum
There was a problem with the forum where responding to someone’s post took a loooooooooong time. That’s fixed now, and the forum is super-fast. So go and talk to someone there! BTW, I don’t reply to everybody’s introduction, recipe request, or questions that I don’t know the answer to. But the forum is going very well and is very popular. Some of my readers make friends through the forum which is very awesome!
That’s it! More changes and improvements are coming, I’m working on them all the time.
Posted Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 11:09 am
I made kimchi jjigae today :). Delicious! I added ready made spicy Kimchi Jjigae paste.
The recipe is here.
Update!
Jamie won the Grand Prize in the contest! Congratulations!
The contest winners:
1, Grand Prize : Username [Jamie Frater], Culinary Vacation in Korea
2, Second Prize : Username [kmac1047], Samsung TL500(EX1) Camera
3, Third Prize : Username [mariewebb8], [Camille17], [AllergicAngel], Tray with mother of pearl.
One of our most active participants, Jamie Frater, entered a Korean food blog contest. It will finish soon. The grand prize is a trip to Korea. I love to read his articles. When I read his posts, I am surprised at his well-researched description about each Korean dish! The photos of his stunning looking homemade delicious dishes make me surprised as well. This is some of the best Korean food blogging I have ever read.
If he has a chance to visit to Korea as a winner of this contest, I’m sure he will meet a lot of Korean food experts and experience diverse Korean cuisine that I haven’t posted or I wouldn’t be able to post.
Let’s help him get to Korea so that he can tell us even more Korean cooking stories when he comes back.
How can we help him?
Check this link and read his articles, and click “thumb up” for each one you like. I thumbed up every article! Your “thurmb up” will give him a vote towards winning a trip to Korea.
Some of my readers who cook Korean food on regular basis deserve some attention from the Korean government. The Korean government is working hard to globalize Korean food, so they should invite and interview those who have been cooking Korean food and sharing with their friends, family, and coworkers. They are not trying to be ambassadors for Korean food, they just genuinely love it.
Jamie Frater’s Korean meal table setting
Come to the YouTube NextUp meetup on 7pm Wednesday to say hello to me and the other NextUp Youtubers!
Where: The Frying Pan, New York City
(docked at Pier 66 Maritime on Pier 66a at West 26th Street in the Hudson River Park, three blocks north of Chelsea Piers)
When: Wednesday, May 25 2011, at 7pm
See you there!
One day before I left for Mexico City from Puerto Escondido in Mexico, I was sitting near the pool in the hotel. I was surprised to hear a voice coming from behind me. “I heard that you make a very delicious sauce!”
He said he heard about me from his friend who came to my brunch party the other day. His name is Mr.Chuck! While I talked to him, I found out he’s very interested in food and cooking. Not everyone who loves food loves to cook. He and his wife have their own house in Arkansas, USA. They said they come to Puerto Escondido every year and stay for about 3 months during the winter.
“How many years have you come to this beach?”
“22 years!”
Mr.Chuck drives all the way from their house in Arkansas. They usually come right after Christmas and stay there. So I can say they are not exactly travelers when they are in Mexico but they are part-time residents! : ) During the American cold winter, they stay in warm Mexico. What an adventurous couple they are! Surprisingly, they had never bought fresh fish from fishermen even though they came there 22 times!
I asked “Do you want me to prepare fresh fish for you?”
He and his wife were very happy about my offer. “What shall we bring?”
I asked them: “Can you bring some lettuce and cucumbers?”
I gave them the job to pick up these vegetables – the grocery store is a little far from the beach. They said: “Sure, we have a car, so we can pick them up easily!”
Bev said: “We’re going to bring clean vegetables washed with purified water.” My other friend John also said he would come. He asked: “Do you want me to bring something?”
I said, “Beer?” : ) Deal!
We had a great time during our meal as you see in the video.
Bev was very interested in preparing raw fish meal for her friends. I gave her my leftover ingredients including the dipping sauce (chodoenjang). I told her where to get fresh fish and where to get the fish fillet.
A few weeks later, I received an email from Bev! “Hey! I subscribed to your website! I had a raw fish meal party with the dipping sauce you gave me and it was a big hit! All of my friends loved the sauce and the raw fish meal I prepared for them!”
What a surprise! She’s one of my website subscribers now! The thing that makes me more excited is that they had a Korean fresh fish dinner 1 day after I left there!
Looking at the table setting made me smile because it looks identical to mine! She also said she made my emergency kimchi and she loves the taste! She found a Korean grocery store in her area, Arkansas.
These are the photos that she made for her friends : ) See the cucumber strips in the glass! I prepared cucumber strips that way when I invited them!
I talked to her over the phone before posting this blog. She sent me a few more photos to prove she had a great time with her friends! Yay, Bev! You are awesome! Sharing your food with your friends is such a great idea! I’m very impressed and I wish I could have been sitting there!
The man pointing says, “by the way, Bev’s dinner was awesome!”
Hello everybody!
Some of my readers have already contacted me about my global cooking show and invited me to their homes to cook. ooh whoo! Exciting!
I’m still in the planning stage for the show. I’m going to post details soon and let you know how to join it, but one thing I can tell you is that filming will probably start in September or October when everyone has finished their summer vacations.
I will travel around the world and cook with my viewers. I pitched this idea to YouTube in March for the NextUp program, and they chose me to join the program. Being chosen as one of the 25 YouTube Nextup creators and joining the creators’ camp at Google has been the most fascinating experience that has happened to me so far this year!
But this year hasn’t finished yet. I’ll have more fascinating and exciting experiences when I meet as many my readers and my YouTube audience as I can, all around the world!
But please help me choose a name for this show. Here are some ideas so far. Do you have any other creative names?
Maangchi’s Global Cooking Show?Planet Maangchi?Maangchi’s Travel Cooking Show?Maangchi, Gabsida! (Gabsida ??? means “let’s go” in English)In my experience, the more people who are brainstorming ideas, the better.
If you have a good idea for a name, please write it in the comments. If you like one of my ideas above, or one of someone else’s idea, write a comment about it: “I like xxxxxx’s suggestion!”
I made kimbap for my long time readers Dan and Ryan. We met at Bryant Park a few days ago. Dan is living in California and now visiting his friends in NYC.
Dan is the king of macaroon making. He brought several beautiful and colorful macaroons but I squeashed them by placing my picnic bag on it. “Oh, no! I’m sorry!” Even though they were broken, they were still so delicious. I emailed him asking if he has a good photo of his macaroons this morning and he emailed the photo, so you will be able to see what they look like. They were soft and crunchy and the chocolate filling inside was so tasty. Ryan and I were saying the same thing, “yeah so yummy!”
I realized we all 3 of us are passionate about cooking. Ryan, living a 1½ hour driving distance from NYC, joined our meeting. He will be on my “Korean food fan” page soon. Ryan brought my favorite dish “papaya salad” that he made!
All of us were excited to take some photos of the food that we brought. I said, “I should take a photo of these,” then they also took out their own cameras! I thought it was so funny! 3 avid cooks got together and the result is that we kept chatting about food again until we said goodbye! : )
Dan, me, and Ryan
My kimbap: When u click the kimbap, it will lead to my tuna kimbap recipe. You will have an idea of how to make this.
Broccoli: I thought we need some green stuff, so I made this. Blanched and seasoned broccoli. yummy!
Pan-fried beef
Ryan’s Papaya salad: sweet, crunchy and spicy! yum!
Dan’s good looking macaroons!
Danpatjuk (sweet red bean soup): Korean sweet dessert. I made this with the leftover sweet red beans from my patbingsu demonstration at Google in NYC.
Mr. Jeffery! He was sitting right next to us in the park by himself. We 3 of us were busy taking photos of food and ourselves. We asked him to take photos of us. Not one time but a few times! I had a small extra lunch box filled with kimbap. I asked him, “are you interested in this kimbap that I made? I have extra kimbap and a few pieces of beef, so if you want, have some!” He was happy to accept my offer and told me it is delicious!
Thank you for being our photographer, Jefferey! : )
My cooking class at Whole Foods Culinary Center on April 16 was another great success! The word “Success” to me means that everybody had a great time! : )
I was excited to see my favorite chef, cooking instructor, and the author of “The Dumplings” Mr. Wai Hon Chu! He organized my cooking class from beginning to end, and he was there to assist.
The menu for the class was bulgogi stew, bibimbap, and cucumber salad. I took my homemade fermented kimchi to share when we eat after finishing the class. Some of them said, when they tasted bulgogi stew they made, “amazing!” Someone asked, when I showed how to make rice with a pot, “You don’t need to season the rice?” I said: “Good question! Rice served almost 3 meals a day in Korean cuisine, which can be bland, so many different kinds of seasoned side dishes are developed…”
After exchanging some questions and answers, I found that all 12 students love cooking all type of dishes and they are real foodies! There were 3 of my blog readers in the class. I met the lady named Sophie who left a comment on my Facebook wall, “See you tomorrow!”. I answered a few hours before the class, “See you soon!” : ) She is living in Paramus, New Jersey and she has been using my recipes for a while. She said, “Maangchi, I came all the way to see you!”
Some of them asked me, “Can I get all the ingredients here in Whole Foods Market?” It sounded like they’re going to shop for groceries to make what they learned!
At the West 4 subway stop to go to my class! Nobody will guess what I have in my backpack! : ) : My feremented kimchi, soaked fernbrake (kosari), and an earthenware bowl to demonstrate dolsotbibimbap.
12 good looking foodies! Yay we are chopstick ninjas! : )
Min and Wei run the Whole Foods Culinary Center. It was good to work with you again, Wei!
Marinated bulgogi! yummy! : to make bulgogi stew, let’s make bulgogi first!
ooh la la! bulgogi stew arrangement is done! We are going to start cooking in a minute!
ow ow all of us look very focused! Yes, we should look serious when we learn cooking!
I forgot to ask everybody’s name. The lady with baseball cap helped me carrying the heavy platter for bibimbap. All of them look happy and serious. Check out the expression on my face! See? I love what I’m doing! : )
Posted Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Our first attempt in cooking Korean food. Made this with my friend using your recipe for Bulgogi, we use pork because I do not eat beef. We reduce some sugar. We cook a portion of this in a Korean pan after season it for half a day. We find a bit too much sauce but the taste is great! The rest we freeze it for this weekend. We garnish with lemon to remove the smell of the pork. Also garnish with some sesame seeds. We will next try the Soondubu and vegetable pancake. We got the ingredients for Soondubu except korean fish sauce, managed to call a korean supermarket and they have the stock. Thank you Maangchi for all the recipes and really enjoy watching your cooking videos.
The recipe is here.
A small, Asian grocery store with mostly imported Korean goods. They have dried, canned, refrigerated, and frozen items available. Additionally, they have a small deli-like counter with various Korean side dishes available (I highly recommend the seasoned, pickled radish). The owner does not speak much English, but she is very kind and the prices are extremely affordable!
Posted Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at 5:42 pm
I couldn’t find lima beans, so I used red bean paste instead. It was yummy!!
The recipe is here.
I’m happy to introduce my delicious sweet manju pastry recipe to you today.
I researched the origin of this pastry on the internet, some bloggers and Wikipedia say the idea of this pastry originated a long ways back in China, as Chinese dumplings are made with fillings and dough skin. When these dumplings were introduced to Japan, the Japanese modified the dumplings and made them into pastries by adding fillings made with sweet beans. They called this manju.
Eventually manju came to Korea, which is where I learned it. I’m not sure if the taste of my manju is different from the original Japanese manju because I’ve never tasted Japanese manju. If you know more about the history and tastes of different manju, please let us know about it in the comments.
Where did I get this recipe?
I was very excited the first time I had this homemade manju visiting my friend Jeongjin’s house in Korea. Jeongjin would make so many delicious dishes and I loved whatever she made. She was generous about sharing her recipes with me and my other friends. It was a big revelation for me to see that we could make such delicious sweet pastries at home and not have to buy them at a bakery. As soon as I tasted these, I knew I had to make them. This is Jeongjin’s recipe.
She and I lost touch years ago. I’m wondering if she still keeps cooking these days. Whenever we met each other, we talked about new delicious dishes and recipes and learned from each other.
If you feel your heart beating quickly when you see this video recipe today, you’ll know how I felt the first time I saw them being made. You and I are really in the same boat. : ) If so, “Cheers” to you!
Ingredients (for 8 manju):
1 cup lima beans, ½ cup sugar, ½ ts salt, ¾ cup flour and ½ cup extra flour, 2 eggs, ¼ cup sesame seeds, ¼ cup sweetened condensed milk, 2 ts of vanilla extract.
Directions:
Let’s make sweet filling first!
Pop the beans out of the skins with your fingers.Place the beans in a heavy bottomed pot with 1 ¼ cup of water and bring to a boil over medium high heat for 10 minutes.Lower the heat and simmer for about 35-50 minutes until the beans are soft and fluffy.Mash the beans with a wooden spoon until they have the consistency and look of mashed potatoes.
Turn the heat off and cool down.Make dough:
Add ¾ cup flour, 1 egg, ¼ ts salt, ¼ cup sweetened condensed milk, and 1 ts vanilla extract to a mixing bowl.Mix it well with a wooden spoon until smooth.
Make 8 manju:
Divide the dough and the filling into 8 same-sized balls on a floured cutting board.
Flatten out each dough ball by pressing it down with the palm of your hand.Place a filling ball into the center of a flattened dough ball. Wrap the dough around the filling.Seal the edges of the wrapped dough and form into the shape of an egg. To make a chestnut, first make a ball and then gently pinch a point at one end. Leave the other end rounded.Dip the side of egg shaped manju into water first, and then dip into sesame seeds so the seeds stick to side. For chestnut shaped manju, dip the top into water, and then dip the top into seeds.Brush the egg yolk over the sesame seeds on egg shaped manju. For chestnut shaped manju, brush egg yolk below the part where sesame seeds are on so that the color will change into brown when it’s baked.Repeat for each pastry, and place the manju on a cookie pan lined with a baking sheet, with the sealed part of the manju on the bottom.Bake in the oven at 350°F on the middle rack for about 20 minutes.
If you make chestnut shaped manju, bake them a little longer for a deep, rich color.
Serve as a dessert or snack.Posted Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 2:37 pmI’m happy to introduce my delicious sweet manju pastry recipe to you today.
I researched the origin of this pastry on the internet, some bloggers and Wikipedia say the idea of this pastry originated a long ways back in China, as Chinese dumplings are made with fillings and dough skin. When these dumplings were introduced to Japan, the Japanese modified the dumplings and made them into pastries by adding fillings made with sweet beans. They called this manju.
Eventually manju came to Korea, which is where I learned it. I’m not sure if the taste of my manju is different from the original Japanese manju because I’ve never tasted Japanese manju. If you know more about the history and tastes of different manju, please let us know about it in the comments.
Where did I get this recipe?
I was very excited the first time I had this homemade manju visiting my friend Jeongjin’s house in Korea. Jeongjin would make so many delicious dishes and I loved whatever she made. She was generous about sharing her recipes with me and my other friends. It was a big revelation for me to see that we could make such delicious sweet pastries at home and not have to buy them at a bakery. As soon as I tasted these, I knew I had to make them. This is Jeongjin’s recipe.
She and I lost touch years ago. I’m wondering if she still keeps cooking these days. Whenever we met each other, we talked about new delicious dishes and recipes and learned from each other.
If you feel your heart beating quickly when you see this video recipe today, you’ll know how I felt the first time I saw them being made. You and I are really in the same boat. : ) If so, “Cheers” to you!
Ingredients (for 8 manju):
1 cup lima beans, ½ cup sugar, ½ ts salt, ¾ cup flour and ½ cup extra flour, 2 eggs, ¼ cup sesame seeds, ¼ cup sweetened condensed milk, 2 ts of vanilla extract.
Directions:
Let’s make sweet filling first!
Pop the beans out of the skins with your fingers.Place the beans in a heavy bottomed pot with 1 ¼ cup of water and bring to a boil over medium high heat for 10 minutes.Lower the heat and simmer for about 35-50 minutes until the beans are soft and fluffy.Mash the beans with a wooden spoon until they have the consistency and look of mashed potatoes.Turn the heat off and cool down.Make dough:
Add ¾ cup flour, 1 egg, ¼ ts salt, ¼ cup sweetened condensed milk, and 1 ts vanilla extract to a mixing bowl.Mix it well with a wooden spoon until smooth.Make 8 manju:
Divide the dough and the filling into 8 same-sized balls on a floured cutting board.Flatten out each dough ball by pressing it down with the palm of your hand.Place a filling ball into the center of a flattened dough ball. Wrap the dough around the filling.Seal the edges of the wrapped dough and form into the shape of an egg. To make a chestnut, first make a ball and then gently pinch a point at one end. Leave the other end rounded.Dip the side of egg shaped manju into water first, and then dip into sesame seeds so the seeds stick to side. For chestnut shaped manju, dip the top into water, and then dip the top into seeds.Brush the egg yolk over the sesame seeds on egg shaped manju. For chestnut shaped manju, brush egg yolk below the part where sesame seeds are on so that the color will change into brown when it’s baked.Repeat for each pastry, and place the manju on a cookie pan lined with a baking sheet, with the sealed part of the manju on the bottom.Bake in the oven at 350°F on the middle rack for about 20 minutes.If you make chestnut shaped manju, bake them a little longer for a deep, rich color.Serve as a dessert or snack.Posted Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 2:37 pm