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I've had a complex relationship with Korean food, but I appreciate that I can now find it at popular chains like Trader Joe's.
I lost my innocence at a young age over a sandwich. When my teeth sunk into that white soft bread like an apple in the garden of Eden, and like Eve I found shame in the relief of belonging.
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I'd felt freed from that humiliation that stopped me from eating my omma's carefully packed lunches of kare rice with little containers of kimchi and eventually led me to ask her to stop making me Korean lunches because they were stinky.
But now Korean food is cool and it's given me a complex. Korean restaurants earn Michelin stars, Korean BBQ spots are widespread, and Trader Joe's even carries Korean-inspired food.
So when I went to Korea for the first time at age 23 and ate the same food my parents did in the city that wasn't even a city when they were born and raised, I no longer shrink. I find some happiness that there is a Korean kid out there who may never have to hear that their lunch is smelly. I also find comfort in being able to get Korean food beyond the aisles of H-mart and Korean Korner.
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I just moved to New York and haven't been able to find a Korean grocery store near me yet, but Trader Joe's has remedied some of my homesickness.
With that, here's what I — a Korean American who just returned from Korea — think of some of its takes on Korean delicacies.
My omma's galbi is special, a multiday affair of blending, marinading, and grilling short ribs that are tenderly sweet, savory, and smoky. When I tasted Trader Joe's Korean-style short ribs I instantly missed her.
Tj's Korean Restaurant, Christchurch
Trader Joe's version of galbi surprised me with how balanced the flavors were, especially because it wasn't too sweet or dry. The short ribs are definitely one of the pricier items at Trader Joe's at $15.99, but they're worth it for how they capture the perfect amount of fattiness.
For best results, place the galbi in the oven on a rack that's over a baking sheet filled with water. This will catch the fat and hydrate the meat — it's how my omma does it.
However, the texture of the bulgogi was less akin to its namesake but rather quite similar to galbi. My vegetarian friend who tried this said this was giving jackfruit.
File:korean.food Andong.hansik Heotjesabab.jpg
That being said, I was impressed that Trader Joe's tteok bok ki, rice cakes simmered in a gochujang-based sauce, had a perfect amount of softness and chewiness.
However, the sauce was too sweet for my taste — and I have some of the weakest taste buds in my family. My cousin who tried this echoed the sentiment, so I added Trader Joe's gochujang paste in an attempt to give it more of a kick. I thought the paste was also too sweet on its own but it kind of helped.
I don't know if it is trying to be sundubu-jjigae, a soft tofu stew, or kimchi-jjigae, a kimchi-based stew. Either way, I didn't think this soup was good.
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It had a thick consistency that is at odds with whatever dish it was trying to replicate. I also thought the soup was too sweet and missing a lot of spice and bite from the kimchi.
Traditionally, when serving a jigae, the rice is kept separate and mixed in later. Trader Joe's didn't do this and thus the rice was soggy, but the chain gets points for using black rice as it is what many old-school Koreans eat.
On special days, my omma would make hotteok, a pancake filled with brown sugar, from scratch. The recipe is quite simple but more often than not she'd microwave or fry frozen versions from H-Mart.
Tj 코리안 바비큐
She would make heaps of them for international nights in elementary school and she'd do the same when I had to bring cultural food for my human geography class in high school.
I was hoping for a taste of home with these, but Trader Joe's sweet cinnamon-filled Korean pancakes missed the mark. The pancake was too thick with too much cinnamon, which gave the filling a gritty texture. I thought they also felt off without the traditional chopped peanuts or sesame in the filling.
Fried rice is another staple my omma would make. My omma's fried rice is a wealth of ingredients with peas, corn, crab, shrimp, carrots, onions, and whatever vegetable mix we had in the freezer.
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It was still tasty but I was disappointed. In my opinion, Trader Joe's bulgogi beef fried rice lacked all of the fixings and majorly skimped out on the bulgogi and kimchi.
This fried rice would make a great base for a meal but should never be the headliner — it does not have the gall.While we're no strangers to the chipper, bell-chiming Trader Joe's aisles, the store's expanding Korean-inspired offerings now dot its shelves from the freezer section to the pantry staples with items like tteokbokki (also sometimes spelled ddukbokki), gochujang, and perhaps the most well-known Korean food in the world, kimchi.
Thankfully, these new additions to the Monrovia, Californian-based grocery chain outdate the brand's past practice of labeling non-American items with harmful, stereotypical titles (according to Forbes) like Trader Ming's to denote Chinese products, Trader Giottos' for Italian goods like pasta and marinara sauce, Arabian Joe's to signal its Middle Eastern-influenced line of hummus and tabouli, and so on. Otherwise, we may be fastening our chopsticks to a noodle squeamishly dubbed Trader Kim's — or worse.
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Instead, the only offense these Korean-influenced offerings are guilty of is under-seasoning and sogginess, a crime rampant in the bountiful freezer section that spans from the wildly popular Trader Joe's frozen shrimp to desserts. So, to establish a pecking order of Korean-ish dishes and ingredients, we loaded up one of the store's bright crimson baskets with bulgogi, dumplings, japchae, and more to test drive how the Korean leaning items stack up against the classic Korean dishes we're accustomed to.
Blink, and you might miss Trader Joe's 10-ounce plastic mini-jar of kimchi hiding alongside the store's hummus, cheeses, and fresh pasta selection. The first sign something may be amiss is how Trader Joe's squat kimchi container holds only two to four approximate servings of Korea's most popular food. Like most store-bought kimchi, Trader Joe's entry into the cannon opts for Napa cabbage (or baechu kimchi) but also includes bits of white onion and shredded daikon radish, which consistency-wise felt a little odd and discordant.
Typically found in economy-sized jars in Korean households, the minuscule Trader Joe's varietal lacks both a healthy amount of the kimchi liquid we love to pour over rice and any texture left in the Napa cabbage. Quixotically dry
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Soggy, TJ's kimchi also is woefully under-salted and omits any fish or shrimp products classically found in various types of kimchi — great for our vegan and vegetarian friends but lacking for anyone acquainted with a more flavorful version of the fermented food. However, we will admit that the kimchi does boast a noticeable amount of spice, and while still fairly mild overall, we were left with a zingy tingle lacing our tongues after plucking cabbage bits from the undersized container.
One of the more ambitious Korean-ish items from Trader Joe's catalog is its marinated short ribs (or galbi), found in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. Double-sealed in two plastic bags (one containing a simple marinade the ribs have been submerged and frozen inside), Trader Joe's bone-in short ribs must be defrosted before preparing and come in 20-ounce portions (about six slices).
Once thawed, the preparer is asked to heat a skillet over medium-high heat and sautee the ribs for three to four minutes per side. We tipped the remaining marinade into our cook pan for an extra saucy and (hopefully) flavorful plate of red meat. Though the ribs boast galbi's signature tenderness, the sweet and salty intermingling was noticeably turned down in Trader Joe's version.
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Containing soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, garlic, and (oddly) lemon juice, the store-bought ribs fall short of satisfying cravings for the cornerstone of Korean bbq and could use a double dose of sugar or a shredded apple for an extra boost of sweetness. The meat also possessed a slight tinge of freezer burn toward each bite's final notes, which left the experience feeling artificial and uncanny.
The only imitation meat among Trader Joe's Korean items arrives in a pouch of marinated, plant-based protein intended to mimic the qualities of bulgogi — or a sweet, BBQ beef dish popular in Korea and found at most Korean restaurants in the U.S. Admittedly, the phony beef does resemble the real
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