Gimbap (김밥)

Hey y’all! Are you ready for more Korean food recipes? You’re goddamn right you are! Especially because this past Sunday was Korean-American day and I missed posting on Sunday whoops.

Today is all about one of my favorites (Although who are we kidding, literally all Korean food is my favorite), Gimbap (김밥)!

The easiest way for me to describe gimbap is that it’s like Korean sushi but without the raw fish. Gimbap literally means seaweed rice 💁🏻

My mom usually made gimbap for parties and other special occasions, but it’s also associated as a picnic or take-out food. It’s really easy and convenient to carry around, but also it’s a little time consuming to prepare all of the ingredients. It’s definitely worth it though!

I get all of my ingredients at H-mart, but I know it’s hard to get Korean ingredients if you don’t have an H-mart or other Asian market nearby. You can get most of the ingredients in your normal grocery store (I see medium-grain rice (AKA sushi rice) all the time in the international section!), and gim (김) on Amazon, but refrigerated things like danmuji (단무지) – pickled yellow radish (Fun fact, my mom always called it noran-mu (노란무) and literally means yellow radish…I didn’t know it was called danmuji until about a week ago…) – are a little more difficult to find. The best thing about gimbap is that you can use whatever fillings you want! Sometimes I like to make gimbap with kimchi, cheese, and ham (so good) or just just carrots, cucumbers, scallions, and eggs (so good with soy sauce and a little vinegar!).

Below are links for the proper kind of gim so that you can get on Amazon so that you can get started with your gimbap adventures! 50 sheets is more than what you’ll need for one adventure, but you can always wrap the rest in plastic (or a bag) and toss it in the freezer. It keeps really well and for a long period of time so don’t worry about it going bad!

50 Full Size Sheets (3.5oz) Korean Roasted Seaweed Premium Yaki Sushi Nori Gimbap Roll, Vacuum Packed

I also have to honestly suggest that you get a rice cooker if you don’t have one but intend to make a lot of Korean food. It’s so easy and really convenient to have! An American one like the Black and Decker below is good enough to get the job done, but if you ever have the chance to get a Cuckoo or Zojirushi, I highly recommend it! I own a super bougie Cuckoo (it’s like the Rolls Royce of rice cookers per Whitney) who talks to me (her name is 수지, which translates to “Suji” but should be pronounced Susie), but a basic one with cook/warm function (like the ones below) is good enough for the casual rice consumer.

BLACK+DECKER RC506 6-Cup Cooked/3-Cup Uncooked Rice Cooker and Food Steamer, White

Cuckoo CR-0655F Rice Cooker, 3 Liters / 3.2 Quarts

Zojirushi NHS-06 3-Cup (Uncooked) Rice Cooker

If you happen to already own an Instant Pot, I think you could also make your rice in that, but I’m not familiar with it so I don’t want to tell people to buy it and have it not work out. If you happen to own an Instant Pot and successfully make rice with it, leave a comment with how down below! It’ll be super helpful to others, I’m sure.

Anyway, now that I’m done talking about rice cookers and where to get seaweed…

Jump to Recipe

---

First things first, marinate your beef. Any tender cut cut into thin strips is fine! I marinated mine in a mix of sesame oil, mirin, soy sauce, pepper, and sugar and set it aside during the prep, but you can always get that going the day before if you want more flavorful meat. Other meat options that require less prep are spam (Koreans love that ish), imitation crab, canned tuna or whatever the hell you want because gimbap is versatile like that.

Next, get your rice cooking! I made about 3 cups for 3 people (Me, Whitney, and my bfffl (best friend forever for life) Aly) and we kind of ran out of rice. Gimbap takes up a lot of rice, so I recommend making at least one cup of rice more than the amount of people you intend to feed (if all you’re eating is gimbap).

Your rice should take 30-60 minutes to cook (depending on your rice cooker’s bougie-ness), so while it cooks you should prep your other ingredients. I opted for more traditional fillings because if I’m going to make blog food, I might as well go HAM and make traditional shit that’s aesthetically pleasing because colors and junk.

So first I prepped cucumbers and danmuji by seeding the cucumbers and cutting both ingredients into long, thinnish strips (about 2-3 inches long and 1/4-1/2 inch wide). Then I took my preshredded carrots (because I’m lazy as hell) and cooked them over medium heat with sesame oil, salt pepper, and just a little sugar. You still want your carrots to be crunchy, so don’t cook them too long, just long enough to get that raw bite out, so about 5-6 minutes. Other vegetable options include sautéed spinach (sesame oil, salt, pepper…maybe a little garlic), burdock root (very Korean, might need an Asian market to find it) or (once again) whatever the hell you want. It’s your life. Do what you want!

At this point, Susie the Rice Cooker had also alerted me to the fact that she was done cooking my rice, so I gave it a quick fluff/mix so that the rice would stay sticky and not-burned. Is this legitimate? No idea, but I’m going to recommend you do it anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway, once my carrots were done, I gave the pan a quick wipe before cooking the beef for about 8 minutes. I tasted a little when it was almost done to make sure I didn’t need to add anything else and set it aside to cool a little before Aly came over to help make the rolls.

Anyway, once Alyson arrived, I scrambled a couple of eggs and tried to make a little sheet of egg and failed miserably but it’s fine because I still managed to get some strips out of it.

Then, I seasoned our warm rice with sesame oil, salt, pepper, and sugar and we got to making gimbap. First, we laid the laver shiny side down onto a cutting board and spread a thin, even layer onto the rice, leaving about 1/2-1 inch of space at the top of the laver.

We threw on our other ingredients into neat-ish little lines and rolled up our gimbap into tight little logs like bosses. We let them sit on the seam for a few seconds so that they would seal and not fall apart when they were cut/consumed.

Side note: if you happen to own a bamboo sushi roller thing, go ahead and use it! They’re helpful in getting a tight, even roll which is exactly what you need so that your roll doesn’t fall apart when you go to slice it into little rounds or eat it like it’s a skinny burrito.

For even more sesame flavor (and uber shiny gimbap rolls), you can rub a little sesame oil on the outside once you’re finished with your roll. This can also help the seam stick and prevent the roll from falling apart.

We opted to slice our gimbap into little rounds for the sake of of the blog and also because finger foods are fun. Also you can see all the pretty colors and stuff if you slice it. See?

And of course, it was delicious. Did you expect anything less?

If you did, shame on you. I only put out quality content and sass on this blog. Go stand in the corner and think about what you did.

Everyone else, go forth and make gimbap!