Korean Menu Planning

Pinterent Februari 27, 2024 Comment

This week’s meal plan is all about Korean and Japanese flavors! Bring the taste of Korea to your kitchen with a smoky and savory donburi bowl, followed by the popular tofu stew – doenjang jjigae. You will then make your way to Japan and enjoy the most tender and moist piece of miso salmon you have ever tasted. A cozy bowl of the traditional kitsune udon is also on the menu and you will end the week with a meat-free meal with another Japanese classic – oyakodon.

My husband and I like to spend a couple of hours every Sunday, in the kitchen, chopping and prepping meals for the week ahead. The main reason is because it helps us to eat better and more wholesome meals. It also saves us a lot of money as we tend to eat out or get food delivered when we are tired after a work day and don’t feel like cooking from scratch.

Not only is it tiring to think about what to cook, it can also be stressful to try to get something on the table as quickly as possible.

Korean Food Menu Restaurant On A White Wooden Table Top Template Background. Use For Poster, Print, Flyer, Brochure Stock Vector

But that can all be resolved easily when there’s food prepped in the fridge, ready to be cooked! Suddenly it becomes easy to cook dinner in under 30 minutes since everything is ready to go and little brain power is needed.

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Every week I will be providing a meal plan in pdf format that you can print or save on an electronic device. Each meal plan will include 5 main dishes with their individual total cooking time and flavor profile, a grocery shopping list, and a link to those recipes. The plan also includes lunch, side, and snack ideas for the week.

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Korean Fish Donburi – A delicious rice bowl topped with fish that has been seasoned with a mix of garlic, ginger, gochugaru, soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil. Not too spicy but nice and smoky!

Kitsune Udon – One of the easiest meals you can make! This is a simple udon noodle dish that’s very popular in Japan because of its delicate taste and sweet inari age (seasoned deep fried tofu pockets).

Miso Salmon – Marinating salmon in miso paste gives the fish a very tender and moist texture. Serve it over rice and with a side salad or vegetable of your choice.

Korean Cuisine Kimchi And Meat Dishes Lunch Menu Vector Image

Doenjang Jjigae – If you are in the mood for something light yet filling, try this doenjang jjigae recipe a try. What you get are classic Korean flavors – smoky, pungent, briny, and savory. The tofu stew can also be made spicy by adding Korean chili peppers or a jalapeno pepper.

Vegetable Oyakodon – A meatless oyakodon everyone loves! Made with lots of veggies, eggs, and seasoned with a sweet and savory tare style sauce, this rice bowl is kid friendly and very easy to make.

Doing a little prep before the work week begins is always a great way to save time in the kitchen after a long day. I do mine on Sundays while listening to my favorites tunes or putting on one of my favorite reality tv shows (a guilty pleasure). This way cooking doesn’t feel like work but more like a relaxing meditation.

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Caroline Caron-Phelps is a recipe creator, food blogger, and photographer. She showcases delicious, authentic Asian recipes, especially Japanese, vegan, and vegetarian, with beautiful photography, easy-to-follow instructions, videos, and practical recipe variations. Caroline has been featured on Bon Appetit, Shape Magazine, Self, Today Show, and more.You can use this guide to make your Korean meal planning and prep easier and yummier. I believe you don’t need to cook a lot of Korean dishes to have a wonderful meal. You just need a few dishes that go well together with awesome flavor combinations to enjoy the most amazing dinner (or lunch)!

I know I have said this a few times before, I have often experienced and seen Korean meals where there are several side dishes (like 6-7 or more) but where most banchans are all spicy and they all fight each other when it goes in your mouth. And when you are done eating, I always come away wondering if there was a way the meal could have been better.

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When I plan my menu, I try to do it so that there’s a good balance in flavors, for example – here are some quick ideas that are behind my Korean Menu Plan —

Because, as much as I love cooking, I don’t like to spend too much time and energy on a meal where it won’t be fully appreciated or simply, not yummy as it could be. I would rather make 3 dishes that go wonderfully together than 7 dishes that individually are delicious but when served together in a meal.. it’s not as amazing as it could be…

Perhaps, I’m just an engineer at heart.. haha..maximum impact with minimum effort!! Anyway, it just makes me very happy and content when I hear people say how everything tasted so wonderful TOGETHER.

Week 6 Meal Plan With Shopping List

Case in point, if you are going to make Kimchi Jjigae, you don’t want to make Kimchi jeon or Kimchi Fried Rice at the same time.. right? Or make spicy Tteokbokki and then also make a spicy and salty Gochujang Jjigae or Soup? That’s just too much of similar flavors – at least that’s my opinion.😝😜

When I make Kimchi Jjigae, I like to make a savory, nutty or creamy dishes like Sauteed String Potatoes with Mayo (believe me, it just goes so wonderfully together), or just plain pan-fried Tofu or grill some hearty oily fish like Spanish Mackerel.

Some basic compositions of an everyday Korean Meal (note these are NOT the traditional full meals with 10 side dishes but more of just my take on simplified Korean meals that are easy enough to cook every day).

Korean Food Menu, Korea Cuisine Restaurant Dishes 23592603 Vector Art At Vecteezy

To the above meals, especially for 1, 3, 4, 5 compositions, you can freely add more side dishes to each meal to make it even more wonderful and tasty. Compositions 2 and 6 are such that, additional side dishes are really not necessary.

Side Dishes (banchan) make Korean meals extra fun to eat and delicious. And the nice thing about most side dishes is that they can be made in a big batch and then eaten over several days or weeks depending on how long they keep.

See my list of 15 vegetable side dishes and 12 meat + seafood side dishes to get ideas on what you want to try. In the first post, I also have a table that shows how best to store each dish and how long they will last. You can also refer to Food Safety.Gov site for more info on how to safely store foods.

Creatrip: Song Gye Ok

My favorite list of side dishes (because they are my family’s favorite and also because they keep well) that get included in my rotation (I’ll probably have 2 of these at any time): Myeolchi Bokkeum, Ojingeo Chae Bokkeum, Kongnamul, Jangjorim, Cucumber Salad, Kongjaban, Burdock Roots, Musaengche.

What I like to do is to make 2 or 3 side dishes on a weekend or for example, make a large batch of myeolchi bokkeum (dried anchovies) for dinner when I’m making something simple like Baeksuk (Korean Chicken Soup). Because I don’t need to cook much else and have extra time while the soup and rice are cooking.

Once I make it, I serve the anchovies with the soup and then save the rest for the week. At meal-time throughout the week, I take one or two banchan out and serve with other dishes. I try not to serve it every meal because people will get tired of it and won’t eat it.

Honey Bee Sweets: Cooking With Lee Kum Kee Menu Oriented Sauces: Korean Kimchi Fried Rice (韓式泡菜炒飯)

Kimchi and Pickles – as you probably know already, kimchi is a must to have. You don’t need many different kimchis but it’s usually good to have a radish and a cabbage kimchi.

I have listed all my Kimchi recipes in this post above so you can check out to see which ones you might make. If you are a beginner to kimchi, I would recommend making the cucumber kimchi (bottom left) or green cabbage kimchi (bottom right). They are simple and quick to make.

I also always have some pickles (Jangahjji) that I make with one or more of the following: cucumber, garlic scapes, garlic, broccoli stems and green chili peppers (Jalapeno or Korean peppers). You can pickle them altogether or separately. Read more HERE.

How To Plan A Weekly Menu?

3 Quick Korean Side Dishes (Avocado, Mushrooms, Tofu)Lastly, have a list of really quick and last-minute side dishes that you can make in just a few minutes for those times when you just don’t have the time or energy to cook additional dishes.

Below, I have a sample meal plan for 1 week. I kind of have a theme