Korean Cuisine Bento Box
Today’s featured bento box is filled with Korean dishes: chapchae, bindae duk (Korean pancake), spicy sweet chicken and steamed sweet potato. The chapchae recipe can be found in this post and the spicy sweet chicken recipe hasn’t been written down yet. Hang in there you ominvores, I know I promised some meat recipes and they are coming soon!
I usually purchase the Korean pancakes at the deli, but since we are enjoying a long weekend I had time to cook a few myself. These Korean pancakes or bindae duk are different from the other type of Korean pancake, pajeon. Bindae duk is not made with flour but with mung beans that have been soaked then pureed into a batter. However, I must admit that even though with extra days off, I didn’t make the batter from scratch, I bought a packaged “just add water” mix. It tastes just as good so why not? I added thinly sliced white onions and julienned red bell peppers tinto the batter but you can use sliced green onions, zuchini, shiso leaf, etc. Just think very thin pieces and you can’t go wrong. Chopped kimchi works good too.
The remaining section contains baked purple sweet potato. This one I cooked myself in a toaster oven! Easy. Depending on their size, cut into half or quartered place the potatoes with skins in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 30 – 45 minutes. I enjoy using the smaller appliance instead of the heating up the large oven. It saves energy, especially if cooking only one or 2 potatoes and doesn’ t make the kitchen hot.
A close up of the bindae duk in the above photo.
Below, a bento with kimbap, which resembles maki sushi, but tastes very different with it’s sesame oil, spinach, carrot, egg and pickled radish.
There are many excellent Korean favorites that can be easitly placed into a bento box. Keeping in mind the basic principles of packing a bento for safety, you can include kimbap-similar to maki sushi, kalbi jim-braised short ribs, and fried mandu-Korean dumplings. What are your favorite Korean dishes? Have you ever tried adding it to your bento?
By the way, if you like the look of this style of box, I am giving one away in a contest.
This looks so delicious!
I love especially your makis.
As fpr your questions:
I’m not sure if I like korean food. I don’t like it spicy ^^”
As much as I realize bento may be a phenomenon, the word ‘bento’ just means lunch box. And there is a korean term “dosirak” for this japanese term. So yes, there are many versions of “dosirak” with korean food; most middle and high school students in korea used to take “dosirak” to school before the schools started serving lunches.
i love using korean food in my bento — i agree it’s very bento friendly because it’s usually good hot or cold, and there are a number of very colorful elements to it. kimbap is one of my all-time favorites, and i think it holds up MUCH better than sushi for bentos!
Hi Lil’chan-Thanks for your comments, Saba Man doesn’t like spicy too much either, so when I cook Korean food I lighten up on the hot stuff. But there are many Korean foods that are not spicy at all.
Hi well…- In the spirit of my “Hello and Welcome” message, thank you for sharing the Korean word, dosirak. Like the word bento, it means lunch box! One has to ponder though, what do I call a dosirak packed with Japanese food?
Hi gamene- Thanks for commenting and I agree about sushi. Inari sushi is about the only sushi I pack in a bento box.
true that. I have no problem with people calling japanese lunchbox, bento. I just felt uncomfortable seeing bento paired with korean food when koreans do call it something else. The connotation of bento in korea is either japanese bento or the oldies from the 50-60s made with iron. So I was just hoping to see a more generic term like lunchbox rather than such a culture-specific term, for posts like this one, but then everyone thinks different, and you certainly don’t have to agree with me.