Korean Spicy Cold Noodles Recipe - the Perfect Summer Dish Idea (Bibimguksu)

Welcome to another episode of the Park's Kitchen. It's been a pretty hot summer so I thought I would make some Korean spicy cold noodle, which is the perfect summer dish that can help cool us down. I'll show you how easy this recipe is and by the end of the video, you'll be ready to make this on your next 100 degree weather day. This spicy cold noodle is called bibim guksu, the version that uses gochujang and salmon. There's another version called naengmyeon, but this one is so much easier to cook. The sauce will also require apple cider or rice vinegar, light sodium soy sauce, and sesame oil. This cold noodle also uses a lot more vegetables than naengmyeon, making it very healthy and colorful. I'm using cucumber and kimchi. My cat thinks kimchi is very special. I think he's special. There's some latitude on what kind of vegetables to put on top of your but generally cucumber is a must and I'm also using lettuce and cabbage and that's brown sugar. Let's make our spicy sauce. We're gonna need about two tablespoons of gochujang in our mixing bowl. I always use two spoons because this gets very sticky. We'll pour three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into the mixing bowl. I really like the fresh apple flavor this vinegar provides to the sauce, but you can also use rice vinegar. Then add one teaspoon of light sodium soy sauce. Add a tablespoon of sesame oil. All this liquid will help loosen up that gochujang when we mix. Add two teaspoons of brown sugar to balance the tar. Now mix the sauce until there are no clumps of gochujang into a nice smooth sauce. Finely chop three cloves of garlic to add to the sauce and if you have a garlic press I would just use that because you need it really finely minced. Now we prepare our topping vegetables. Just need one lettuce leaf and a tiny portion of the purple cabbage. Take one lettuce leaf and fold it up three to four times before slicing up super thinly. Slice your purple cabbage thinly as well. We're gonna use about half a cucumber. First make thin cross cuts. We'll then julienne into thin slices. Now we have all our toppings ready. Put them aside for now so we can start cooking. Sorry I totally forgot to put gochugaru, the Korean chili powder, into the sauce. Add one teaspoon. After adding that, mix it around one more time. Now put aside your portion of the noodle. I'm using a bundle of somen noodles in my hand with one inch diameter. This will produce a portion good for one hungry person, me. Heat up some water in your pot. Once it comes to a boil, we're gonna boil an egg. Cook about 12 minutes for a hard boiled egg and eight minutes for a slightly medium boiled egg. All this timing though depends on your elevation and your heat source. Once it's done, give it an ice bath to shock the egg before you peel it if it's a medium boiled egg. Hard boiled eggs don't need to go through this process. You can just throw some cold water and it'll be so much easier to peel. And once it's done, just put it aside for now before we cook the noodles. Now throw the somen into the boiling pot of water. We're gonna cook this thing for about three to four minutes. Watch out for the foamy water overflowing out of your pot if you're cooking in high heat. Once the water gets starchy, it always kind of overflows in high heat. So before the water comes out, you want to basically lower the heat to medium and constantly monitor so that the water doesn't, you know, get out of your pot. And towards the end of the boiling process, you know, just taste one piece of noodle to make sure if it's soft enough. And once it's ready, turn off the heat and we're gonna rinse it in cold water. Bring the pot of noodle into your sink and dump it into your strainer. Then rinse it in cold water thoroughly until everything is cold and is no longer warm in any spot. Make sure you thoroughly drain the water out of this noodle before you bring it over to mix it with the sauce. You don't want this cold noodle to be way too runny from too much water. Now dump the noodle into your mixing bowl with sauce in it and we'll start mixing it very thoroughly. I like to mix it with my hands to make sure the sauce gets to every part of the noodle. Now my favorite part is assembly. I got this traditional cold noodle bowl made out of stainless steel. I thought it might look cool showcasing this noodle. Now add all the vegetables you work hard to chop. I'm adding the lettuce first but really doesn't matter what you put on first because this part is just all for the look. And purple cabbage is not usually used in bibim guksu noodle. I don't think Korea had this vegetable a long time ago so I don't think they used it. But you know I've seen people use it these days and I think it looks pretty nice so why not. Now I'm adding the kimchi. First I thought I would chop it a little bit more thinly before I put it on so that you know you don't get a big old bite of kimchi but rather they're smaller. And now sprinkle some sesame seeds and I think that's it. Final touch. You cut the egg in half. Make sure you put that pretty one on top of everything else. And that's it. You've made your bibim guksu cold noodle. When it's like 100 degrees out nothing else sounds better than a nice cold bowl of spicy cold noodle. With the amount of veggies on it it's also very healthy and it's a great snack or a lunch option. Now my favorite part. Sorry to eat in front of you like this but I gotta say I really enjoy this noodle in this hot weather. Each bite of this chill sweet vinegary noodle tasted so good in my mouth and I completely destroyed this bowl if you ask me. Thank you for watching. Make sure you smash that like button and subscribe if you're new to this channel. I try to make awesome Asian dishes every week easy enough that anyone can follow.