What Is in That?
Hi everyone! It’s The Curative Plate here, long time no see!!
Since we have a bunch of new followers, we’re going to be updating the blog more regularly, and we’ll send out an email alerting you to new posts.
As some of you know, Rachel has been out at farmer’s markets and festivals selling hot prepared food with our Curative Plate Vegan Kimchi: dupbap, chibap, jumeokbap. And even collaborating with another chef at these events for a kimchi-topped fried chicken sandwich. Delicious! If you’d like to try some, or want to pick up a couple jars of our vegan or low FODMAP(ish) kimchi, you’ll find our market schedule here for the dates, times, and locations. We’d love to see you!
For a lot of people, the Korean names of these dishes and what exactly is in them can be confusing. So Rachel wanted to do a little tutorial for you:
“Hi Everyone! It’s Rachel here, the owner and chef at The Curative Plate. We’ve been selling dupbap at markets for some time now, and the number one question I get is: What is dupbap?
Duppeoh (덮어) means “to cover” and bap (밥) is “rice” or “food.” So “dupbap” is “covered rice,” usually covered with a protein or veggies. At the markets, we sell a vegan kimchi and vegan bulgogi dupbap, which is a rice bowl covered with sauteed kimchi, carrots, and bulgogi-seasoned Beyond Beef®, topped with prepared mung beans, and raw shredded white cabbage, followed by a corn sauce, kimchi mayo, and garnished with furikake and green onions. I use white cabbage because it has a sweeter flavor and goes well with the whole dish.
So what is “chibap”? It’s a mix of words again. You just learned what bap (밥) is, right? And “chi” is for chicken. Then “chi” and “bap” would mean chicken over rice. Koreans love their fried chicken and Koreans love their rice, so it’s only right to put them together. I have an ongoing chibap collab with a local chef named Krystyna Cibelli. We were next to each other at many markets and liked each other’s food, so we naturally decided to do a dish together. Our chibap is a bowl of rice topped with gluten-free fried chicken nuggets from Chef Cibelli, raw white cabbage, sauces, garnished with furikake and green onions. In her tent, Chef Cibelli makes a TCP kimchi-topped fried chicken sandwich, that one customer came three days in a row to eat at a recent SxSW event we did together!
Chef Cibelli uses a separate fryer for the gluten-free chicken for me, as I have celiac disease and can’t handle flour, and her chicken was a hit! I had a customer follow us the weekend after SxSW to another market just to get the chibap.
And finally, what is “jumeokbap”? Again, we remember what “bap” is, right? And jumeok (주먹) means “fist.” Literally it means “fist rice,” or rice held in a fist. It is similar to Japanese onigiri. The difference is that Korean jumeokbap is made into a ball and traditionally seasoned with salt, sesame oil, and sesame seeds, without adding any filling. Many soldiers ate jumeokbap during wartime, and my grandfather used to take it to work for lunch in the mountains when my mother was a girl. She said back then they didn’t have lunch bags or boxes. They would leave at dawn after a hefty breakfast, carrying basic jumeokbap with them, and it was their only form of sustenance all day until they returned from the mountains late in the evening. I wanted to stick to the traditional form of jumeokbap and make a simple mix of sesame, vinegar, and two added flavors, topped with a little raw white cabbage, sauces, and green onion."
Hopefully all of that was interesting for you to learn, and now not only will you know what’s in our market offerings, but will be able to figure out new Korean dishes going forward with the vocabulary you’ve mastered.
Can’t make it to the farmer’s markets to get these dishes in person? Order four jars of either kind (or a combo) of The Curative Plate Kimchi on our website here, and we’ll include a recipe card. You could be eating one of these delicious meals soon!
Until next month, happy eating, from Our Heart and Our Hands to Your Plate.
