Healthy Korean Recipes

While slowly fermented cabbage and pungent garlic are the ingredients most people associate with kimchi, there are dozens and dozens of other versions of Korea's national dish, featuring all manner of vegetables, such as these quickly pickled cucumbers with just a trace of garlic.

Get Korean street-food flavor with this quick and healthy homemade stir-fry sauce. Use it for stir-fries, as a marinade for chicken, beef or pork or for tossing with Asian noodles.

Oily fish, such as mackerel, are strong-flavored and pair well with boldly seasoned glazes made from gochujang chile paste. The red, rich paste is so common in Korea that it is sold in virtually every supermarket in plastic containers ranging in size from about 2 cups to about 2 quarts. Normally the main ingredients are fermented soybeans ground with red chiles and powdered rice, plus a little salt and sweetener.

This quick and easy spicy chicken soup recipe is made with leftover cooked chicken and is spiked with garlic, ginger and hot sauce.

If you are looking to start fermenting your own vegetables, the Korean dish kimchi is a great place to start. It's easy to make, and fermentation takes just a few days. Once you have kimchi on hand, serve this healthy dish along with any meal, as an ingredient in stir-fries, stews, savory pancakes and more, or as a condiment to liven up grain bowls, tacos, sandwiches--and the list goes on!

This healthy beef and broccoli stir-fry recipe has a Korean-inspired gochujang sauce. Because stir-fries cook up quickly, have all the ingredients prepped and next to the stove before you turn on the heat. Serve over brown rice or rice noodles.

Try this salty-sweet hard-boiled egg recipe as a swap for deviled eggs at your next party or as a midday snack. Or serve on top of your next ramen noodle bowl.

Make your own cup of instant soup at home with this Korean noodle recipe. Pack several jars at once to take to work for easy lunches throughout the week.

Korean meals always include soups--like this mild one based on vitamin-rich wakame seaweed, the same kind often used in miso soup.

If you're a tempeh skeptic, you've probably never had the firm soy-based slabs slathered with a sweet-and-spicy barbecue sauce. We give this easy BBQ tempeh combo a punch of umami with tamari and add a little heat courtesy of gochujang. It's easy to put your own spin on this recipe; see Variations (below) for some riffs.

In this healthy fried rice recipe, zucchini, carrots and kimchi are tossed with Korean gochujang for a delicious one-bowl dinner. If you don't have leftover cooked rice on hand, be sure to thoroughly cool your rice before adding it to the wok--if it's too warm, it creates too much steam and sticks to the wok. To quickly cool warm rice, spread out on a large baking sheet and refrigerate while you prep the rest of your ingredients, about 15 minutes.

Inspired by the flavors found in Korean barbecue, this dish is a mouth-watering addition to any weeknight repertoire. A fruity Riesling and rice noodles are perfect accompaniments.