What is japchae?
Japchae is a very popular Korean dish (sometimes non – vegan) but we are fully veganised this recipe and now you can easily enjoy simple but amazingly delicious and nutritious meal.
Japchae is a stir – fried vegetables with chewy glass noodles and some of other ingredients. The key thing is to cook vegetables and noodles perfectly to get more flavours and nice texture. With every bite you should feel each vegetable mixed up with some delicious sauce and potato starch noodles.
How to serve them?
The most traditional way to serve that dish is to make steamed buns and serve them together. Fluffy warm steamed buns taste like a small clouds combined with chilled sweet and salty chewy japchae – what a pleasure to eat this in cold winter day with cup of hot herbal tea. However, you can cook this dish in hot summer, just chill buns and japchae and enjoy it with a glass of iced tea or coffee.
Let’s make this absolutely delicious meal! Also, you can cook japchae without adding spicy stuff if you don’t want to.
PrintIngredients for steamed buns
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 2 tbsp. coconut yogurt
- 1/2 cup of warm water
- 3 1/2 cups of flour
- 1 tsp. Salt
- 3 tbsp. Vegetable oil
- 3 tsp. Active dry yeast
Ingredients for japchae
- Bunch of spinach
- 7 champignons
- 250 gr. sweet potato starch glass noodles
- 1 red bell pepper
- 2 portobello mushrooms
- 1/2 chili pepper
- 2 carrots
- 1 large garlic clove
- 1 red onion
- Bunch of green onion
- Olive oil for frying
- Soy sauce
- 10 tsp. Toasted sesame seeds
- 1 tsp. Salt
- 1 tbsp. Brown sugar
Ingredients for Spicy Dressing
- 1 tbsp. Olive oil
- 2 tbsp. Soy sauce
- 1 tsp. Sweet chili sauce
- 1 tsp. Hoisin sauce
- 1/2 tsp. Sesame oil
- 1/2 chili pepper
- 3 tsp. Sesame seeds
Directions:
- First of all let’s make japchae – stir – fried vegetables.
Thinly slice carrot, bell pepper, red onion and green onion. Finely mince garlic and hot chili pepper. Peel and cut mushrooms into pieces.
Of course, it is not necessary to pee mushrooms but I always do it just in case.
- Add a bit of olive oil on preheated frying pan and stir – fry red onion for 3 to 4 minutes on high heat, season with some soy sauce, drizzle with a little bit of sesame oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Don’t forget to add a pinch of brown sugar.
- Do the same thing with carrots, bell peppers, mushrooms and green onion. When you cook mushrooms, add minced garlic clove and cook for couple minutes.
- Pour water into a pan and bring it to the boil. Add glass noodles and place on top of pan a colander with spinach. Cover with lid and cook for couple minutes.
- After two minutes, remove the colander and put spinach in ice cold water. Give a good stir to glass noodles, cover and cook for 6 minutes more. Drain the water, slice noodles with scissors and transfer to bowl.
- Drain the water from spinach and roughly chop. Add to the bowl.
- Second, the dressing.
Pour olive oil to preheated frying pan. Add chopped chili pepper and soy sauce, mix well. Add the remaining ingredients, give a good stir and let it simmer for couple minutes. - Remove from the heat and add prepared dressing to bowl. Give a good stir and keep in fridge.
- And finally we can now start making buns. However, you can make the dough at first and while it is rising, cook the japchae.
- Okay, the most important part for making a perfect dough is to check your yeast. If they won’t rise, you should get the new one or otherwise your buns will not rise.
- Add warm water, yeast and sugar into a mixing bowl, give a good stir and cover with clean cloth. Let it rise for 5 to 10 minutes.
Then add warm coconut milk from can, coconut yogurt and oil, mix until combine. - Add sifted flour and give a good stir. When dough start to stick together, add salt and keep mixing. Knead dough until it become smooth and elastic for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Cover with cloth and let it rise in warm dry place for 1 hour. Knead the dough one more and cut in two pieces.
- Take one half and divide it into 5 parts. Shape balls and put on paper, cover with cloth.
- Take another half of dough and roll it into rectangle, sprinkle with some brow sugar and roll. Cut into small pieces. Put them on paper liners.
- Cover with cloth and let them rise for 30 to 40 minutes.
- Bring the water to the boil. Put buns in bamboo steamer, cover with wet cloth and lid and cook for 15 minutes.
- Serve japchae with steamed buns.
