Milk Street Went to Seoul for Kimchi Fried Rice. Here’s the High-Protein Version a Korean Cook Makes at Home.

WHO’S EATING KOREAN · No. 2 · Jar: sour kimchi · 20 minutes · about 30 g protein per serving · See the series →

When Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, the Boston magazine and cooking school that sends its editors around the world to learn one dish properly, went to Seoul for kimchi fried rice, it came back with a few rules Korean home cooks would recognize at once. Equal parts kimchi and rice. Onion cooked until it just starts to caramelize. A sauce sweetened with pear instead of sugar. The published recipe (Milk Street, April 4, 2023, credited to Courtney Hill and learned from chefs Sung Min Lee and Choi Dong Mae) is behind the magazine’s paywall, so we won’t reproduce it. The headnote opens with a line we agree with completely: “There are countless ways to make kimchi fried rice.”

Source: Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, “Kimchi Fried Rice,” April 4, 2023 (member recipe; Milk Street Magazine, May/June 2023). Milk Street is not affiliated with My Healthy Food Life. The recipe below is our own, written for this series; it borrows the idea, not the recipe.

Why those three rules are right

Equal parts kimchi and rice. Most American recipes treat kimchi as a seasoning, a half cup stirred into three cups of rice. In Korea the dish is a way to use up a jar that has gone too sour to eat plain, so there’s a lot of it, and the sourness is the flavor, not a hint of it. (Which jar you have, and how to tell, is on the kimchi hub.)

Onion, cooked until it just colors. Sweetness without sugar. It takes four minutes and it’s the step most people skip.

Pear in the sauce. Grated Asian pear is the traditional sweetener in a lot of Korean marinades, and a tablespoon does what a teaspoon of sugar does with more aroma and a little juice. Any firm pear works. So does a tablespoon of apple.

The Korean cook’s weeknight version

Ours keeps the three rules and changes two things that matter on a Tuesday. Brown rice instead of white, because the frozen kind is in every freezer aisle now, it fries beautifully from cold, and it adds about 3 g of fiber a bowl. And real protein in the pan: four ounces of shrimp per person plus two eggs, one scrambled through the rice and one fried crisp on top. That takes a dish that is usually a 15-gram side and makes it a 30-gram dinner. The oil comes down to two teaspoons total, because sour kimchi and its juice do most of the work a glug of oil usually does.

Ingredient Notes

Sour kimchi, 1½ cups, chopped, plus 2 tablespoons of its juice. Squeeze it over a bowl and keep the liquid. If your jar is fresh rather than sour, add half a teaspoon of rice vinegar to the sauce.

Cold cooked brown rice, 1½ cups. Straight from the fridge or from a frozen pouch, microwaved one minute less than the bag says so it stays firm.

Shrimp, 8 oz, peeled. Frozen, thawed under cold water in five minutes. Diced chicken breast or a block of extra-firm tofu both work (see Make It Yours).

Eggs, 4. Two scrambled into the rice, two fried on top. The fried ones are not optional in our house.

Pear, 1 tablespoon grated; gochujang, 1 teaspoon; soy sauce, 2 teaspoons; sesame oil, 1 teaspoon. That’s the whole sauce.

High-Protein Kimchi Fried Rice

Serves 2 · Prep 8 min · Cook 12 min · Total 20 min · Dinner · Korean

Ingredients

• 1½ cups sour napa cabbage kimchi, squeezed and chopped, plus 2 tablespoons kimchi juice
• 1 tablespoon grated pear (Asian or any firm pear)
• 1 teaspoon gochujang
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons neutral oil, divided
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 8 oz (225 g) peeled shrimp, patted dry
• 1½ cups cold cooked brown rice
• 4 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
• 2 scallions, sliced; 1 teaspoon sesame seeds; crumbled gim (roasted seaweed), optional

Instructions

1. Stir the kimchi juice, pear, gochujang and soy sauce together in a small bowl. Beat 2 of the eggs in another.
2. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high. Add the onion and cook 4 minutes, stirring, until soft and just starting to color. Add the shrimp and cook 2 minutes, until pink. Push everything to one side.
3. Add the kimchi to the empty side and cook 2 minutes, until it smells sweet-sour and the edges catch. Add the rice and the sauce, break up any clumps, and stir everything together. Press the rice flat against the pan and leave it 1 minute to crisp; stir; repeat once.
4. Push the rice aside, pour the beaten eggs into the gap, let them set 30 seconds, then fold them through. Turn off the heat and add the sesame oil.
5. In a small pan, fry the remaining 2 eggs in the last teaspoon of oil over medium-high until the edges are crisp and the yolks still runny. Divide the rice between two bowls, top each with an egg, scallions, sesame seeds and gim.

Per serving (estimated from USDA FoodData Central values): about 470 kcal · 32 g protein · 48 g carbohydrate · 14 g fat · 5 g fiber · about 1,000 mg sodium. The sodium is mostly the kimchi; a lower-sodium jar (see the buying guide) brings it near 800 mg.

Make It Yours

• Tofu instead of shrimp: half a block of extra-firm tofu, crumbled into the pan with the onion. About 26 g protein a serving, and vegetarian if your kimchi is.
• Chicken: 8 oz diced breast, cooked 4 minutes before the onion goes in. About 38 g.
• The Seoul touch: a tablespoon of butter in place of the first teaspoon of oil. It’s how a lot of Korean cafés make it, and it’s worth it once.
• Leftover rice from a takeout container is ideal. The drier the better.

Storage

Keeps 2 days. Reheat in a pan so the rice crisps again; fry a fresh egg.

Recipe by My Healthy Food Life. Inspired by the approach described in Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street (2023); not a reproduction of that recipe.

Previously in Who’s Eating Korean: Sunny Anderson, gochujang and a 20-minute chicken skillet. Kimchi is also December’s One Jar Challenge jar; start with the fifteen-minute fresh kimchi.