Noodles, Rice & Dumplings

Noodles, rice, and dumplings—or myeon, bap, and mandu, respectively—are the things that fill you up. With the exception of the plain, perfectly cooked rice, which is the foundation of the typical Korean meal, most of the recipes in this chapter were traditionally informal, snacky, quickly eaten foods meant to tide you over. (Though modern dining trends are changing that.) After work, you’d take leftover rice and throw together kimchi bokkeum bap (kimchi fried rice), or grab a few frozen mandu or dumplings from the freezer. Maybe you’d go out to lunch and grab a seaweed-rice roll called kimbop, or get a bowl of the springy black bean noodles called jjeol myeon, then go back to work.