Recipe #11: homage to Bibim Bap with rice waffle

 I love hot pot Bibim Bap at Korean restaurants, with the crispy crunchy rice, delicate vegetables, runny yolk egg, and hot sauce all mixed together in the big hot bowl. But how can you make it at home? This post will show you how to make a rubbishy homage to this classic Korean dish.

Ingredients:

Note that the most important ingredient here is a kitchen small appliance: a waffle maker. I don’t remember when I last used my waffle maker to make actual waffles. I only use it now to “waffle” (yes, I just verbed the word waffle)(then I verbed the word verb) all sorts of things, mostly leftover starches. More on this in future posts.

Note also the fresh rice cooker pot of jasmine rice. I usually use leftover rice for this, but my dinner companion had “seconds” of rice with last night’s dinner of braised tofu (presumably to dilute the braised tofu?) and there were no leftovers for today’s dish.

Also note the fresh vegetables in the picture above. I have included the pick of the seasonal crop: yellow beans, a radish, a few leaves of baby kale, and a small zucchini. However, I would use whatever vegetables were in my fridge or garden, so you can use whatever you’ve got. Even frozen vegetables would be fine.

Note, finally, the container of kimchi. This is a batch of quick homemade non-fermented kimchi I whipped up yesterday. I can’t include the recipe because it’s not mine, but if you are interested, comment below or contact me however you can, and I will share my source. I can’t ferment for beans, so this quick unfermented version is perfect for me. It’s just as delicious as the real thing, in my humble opinion. Of course, you can always buy real kimchi at a Korean restaurant or shop.

Directions:

If you can multitask, now’s the time to do it.

Heat up your waffle iron and oil it, wash your vegetables, and heat some oil in your frying pan on medium high heat.

When the oiled waffle iron is good and hot (mine has an indicator light to let me know), add your rice and close the lid:

Chop your vegetables into this kind of shape and size:

Now in real restaurant Bibim Bap, each vegetable is prepared separately and plated in separate little piles. Here at Rubbishy Cookery we’re not quite so precious about our vegetables. Just toss them all in the heated and lightly oiled frying pan!

Drizzle in some toasted sesame oil…

And sauté the vegetables for a little while. Sauté means “jump” in French, so get those veggies jumping:

It’s very hard to get a photograph of my veggies jumping with one hand tossing the pan and the other hand trying to take the picture. How do all those other recipe bloggers do it??

Meanwhile, check your rice waffle every so often:

Nope, not done yet.

Eventually, and taking longer than I remember, the rice waffle will be crispy and done:

Take your rice waffle out of the waffle maker in one piece, and use it to line your serving bowl:

Add your sautéed vegetables on top:

Oh dear, I chose a too-small bowl and am too lazy to get a bigger one. Don’t make my mistake! Get a big bowl!

Add a little more oil to your still hot pan, and fry your egg, preferably sunny side up with a runny yolk:

Slide your perfect egg on top of the veggies and rice, and add a little kimchi on the side. Drizzle with hot sauce and voilà:

If you have chosen an appropriately sized bowl, you can get right in there with your chopsticks and mix everything together so each bite has a lovely mix of crispy rice, crunchy sautéed vegetables, unctuous egg yolk, pieces of fried egg white, umami-rich kimchi, and piquant hot sauce. 

Well done!