gim

In much of Asia, people use edible dried seaweed sheets in much of their cooking. You may recognize that people use these sheets to make Japanese sushi or Korean kimbap. In America, we often use the Japanese term ‘nori’ to refer to these dried seaweed sheets. That being the case, if you are learning to cook Korean food, you will often see the seaweed referred to as ‘gim’ or ‘kim’ (김) in Korean recipes.

Recently, I wrote about a Korean fried seaweed snack known as ‘kim bugak’ (or gim bugak). Traditionally, people in Korea make this fried crispy seaweed chip by coating dried seaweed in a glutinous rice paste. Then, they would once again dry out the seaweed and rice paste before deep-frying it. Nowadays, people have started making this traditional dish using pre-made rice paper instead of making rice paste from glutinous rice flour. Not only does it skip a few steps, but it also is less messy. Here, we will learn about this new trendy way of making kim bugak!