New cookbooks from Sarah Ahn and Roy Choi take different approaches to Korean cuisine
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Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh, and today we are talking about Korean food. Now, any cuisine goes through changes as it gets passed down from generation to generation. But because so much of culture is wrapped up in food, in a lot of ways, holding on to traditional forms of cooking is a way of holding on to your culture.

In a bit, we'll hear from a social media cooking star who wrote a book about learning to cook from her Korean mother. But first, let's throw all that talk about tradition out the window for a bit. Roy Choi is a chef who got famous for his Korean-Mexican food truck, Kogi Barbecue. Pretty much whenever I'm in LA, I try to get my hands on some sort of burrito filled with Korean short ribs or bulgogi. But in his new cookbook, The Choi of Cooking, there is a heavy emphasis on vegetables and

And up ahead, he tells NPR's Elsa Chang that he needed to break his own addiction to unhealthy food. That's coming up. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Disney+.

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The chef Roy Choi is a legend here in Los Angeles. So when I heard that he wanted to cook something with me, I was like, heck yeah. And you go in and the kitchen feels like a food truck. Oh, it's tight. It's really tight.

Butts be button in here. Oh, yeah. Butts be button. Butts be button. Yeah. Choi made a name for himself with his roving Kogi barbecue food trucks, which offer Korean short rib tacos, kimchi quesadillas. I mean, he put Korean Mexican fusion on the map here. And now he is out with his first ever full on cookbook, The Choi of Cooking.

And today, in his teeny tiny kitchen at the Alibi Room in West L.A., he is going to show me his ways. You can't take your eye off this. No. You have to be fully engaged. Because the difference between delicious and burnt is minuscule. We're frying up eggs, hash browns, tofu, and kimchi on the flat top griddle here for Choi's take on the breakfast burrito. We throw down our massive tortillas, which she's going to show me how to roll right up. Let's do it.

Should I do max filling? No. Oh. Not for your first time. Okay, okay, okay. That's advanced level. All right. We pile on the hot stuff, top it with cheese, cilantro, onions, and a ginger sesame slaw. And then now roll it. So sides first. Sides first. Uh-huh. Then this side. Over, and then you're going to go over pinky and over. Boom. Really? Yeah.

Amazing. I did it. Amazing. Boom. Okay, but now the moment of truth. Could I, Elsa Chang, replicate the burrito mastery of the Kogi King himself? Well, there's only one way to find out. You know what they love on NPR? What's that? You know what sound they love the most? ASMR? Mouth sounds. Okay, let's do it. Oh. Oh. Mmm. Mmm.

This is good. As you eat that, like, you don't think about the fact that it doesn't have meat. No. Right? You're just in there. There's so much flavor. So much flavor. It's like, it's rude. It's in your face. It's punk rock, but it's good for you. I mean, this is a guy who rose to fame selling beef. The name of his food truck literally means meat in Korean.

But now, Choi is on a quest to elevate the humble vegetable. It is the biggest chapter in his new cookbook. And this move towards a healthier, veggie-obsessed Roy Choi was a necessity for him, he says. A way to break what he calls an addiction to junk food and huge portions. So a gallon of ice cream, I couldn't, you know, a pint was just like an hors d'oeuvre, like a double...

A pint was like a deviled egg, you know? And so it had to be a half gallon or a gallon. A corner slice of lasagna was like eating a crudité. So it had to be the whole tray. If I ate less lasagna,

People would ask me what's wrong. Are you okay? Are you okay? Eventually, Choi met a customer at one of his taco trucks who got him to think differently about how he ate. And that nudged him down a new path towards cooking veggie-forward meals that are actually good for you. And...

That does not mean boring. The joy of cooking, he says, is about making healthy eating exciting and approachable. Because if you look at a lot of health food items and wellness, the wellness industry, things are packaged in a way that are very unfamiliar to someone that hasn't grown up around it or hasn't made a conscious choice to get there. Did you set out wanting to make the vegetable chapter the biggest chapter?

I don't think in terms of structure we thought that way, but in terms of

Philosophy, yes. Because you say we don't treat vegetables with the respect they deserve. Vegetables should curse. They should be brash and curse and they should have their tongue out. Like a cheeseburger. It should look like the point of view of the double-double. Badass vegetable. Badass. Badass food porn in your face. Like

It should be Spinal Tap 11, you know, and that's really what it should be. And that's why the vegetables were the biggest chapter, because that's the essence and philosophy of this book is like, I want you to cook that dish in that chapter and forget that you're not cooking meat. I want you to even think that you're cooking meat. Right. Because the recipes are designed as if there was meat in there, you know, and that's kind of the goal of it.

It's so true. We have so unfairly branded vegetables. Like I think about the word broccoli. That's like synonymous for like, give me the practical information. Like just what's the broccoli and what you're actually saying. You know, like vegetables? But if you do it in slang, broccoli means cheese. It means cheddar. It means money. You know, it means weed. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Right? It means marijuana. That's so funny. So if you take the slang of the essence of the feeling of it and put a recipe and a perspective behind it, then maybe people can start eating vegetables.

Yeah. Because they're smoking weed and weed is a plant. Right. You know what I'm saying? People love plants. People love plants. All right. So show me like in this book how you rebrand a couple of your favorite vegetables. Give me the Roy Choi rebrand. Okay. Yeah, it definitely needs a rebrand. And so if you look at the Veg Head chapter, we'll just start from the top. You got watermelon kimchi.

Right. That's something that everybody loves a fruit cart. Yeah. Everybody loves a fruit cart when they see a fruit cart. Absolutely. But they don't always love fruits when they're put on a plate. Right. But then if you put watermelon into a kimchi form, then all of a sudden their minds are blown. They're like, I got to try it. Yeah. It's weird. It's unexpected. Unexpected. You got to create some curiosity, you know, um, crudités. This is the biggest one. Crudités is the big, the hugest one in this book.

Crudités have the worst branding. I agree. In the world. That's the plate I skip when I'm at a buffet or I'm at a friend's house. I'm like, no, I'm going to go to the crackers and the cheese. Yes. Not the cut up vegetables. Because what's crudités in most cases? It's usually the machine cut carrots that are kind of rounded on all ends. Yeah, so they're dried out. They're dried out. Celery, dried snow peas.

And maybe, maybe radishes. And it's served with like Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. And then they're also associated with PTA meetings and mom and school meetings. Because what is always brought to meetings is brownies, cookies, and crudités platters. So how do you make vegetables exciting, raw vegetables exciting? You go to the farmer's market and get really great vegetables, but that's not going to solve the problem.

A crudité platter is not the crudités. It's the dips. It's the dips. You know, it's all about the dips. And that's the problem with the marketing behind crudités is that

You're only serving it with ranch dressing or really bland hummus. You have to diversify your dips. So it's a dip platter, and the vegetable is just the spoons for the dips. Exactly. And you have to make them spicy. You have to make them garlicky. You have to make them funky. You have to do all of that stuff. So in this book, we have all of that. Diversify your dips, people.

The book is called The Choi of Cooking. It's out now, and it is the first full cookbook from the co-owner, co-founder, and chef of Kogi Barbecue, Roy Choi.

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Sarah Ahn co-wrote her new cookbook with her mom, Nam Soon Ahn. So it's not a surprise that it's titled Omba, a Korean mom's kitchen wisdom and 100 family recipes. She talks to here now's Lisa Mullins about the heavy histories behind some of the recipes in the book. Here's Lisa.

Sarah Ahn and her mother Namsu Ahn have become internet stars. Sarah has created Instagram and TikTok videos of her mom cooking traditional Korean family recipes. Now the two have written a new cookbook called Amma. The title, as Sarah explains in one of her videos, is especially meaningful. ♪

Oma means mom in Korean, and in the essence of cooking, Korean moms embody the true art of home cooking, creating meals that heal and nourish. Sarah put the book together with the help of America's Test Kitchen. That's where Sarah is the social media manager. It's already number two on the New York Times bestseller list. As Sarah told me, her mother was initially hesitant about writing a cookbook.

Korean food, what I've learned, it's very easy to make, but there's a lot of easy steps that you have to do in order to make it truly at an oma's level, a Korean mom's level. And she was aware of that going into it and she didn't want to disappoint anyone. And so she knew it was going to be a big labor of love.

And being the wise woman that she is, she knew that without even knowing much about cookbooks and what she was getting herself into. I wonder if she ever used a cookbook when she was growing up. So my mom didn't grow up with Korean cookbooks or any cookbooks at all. I think for Koreans, this cuisine is founded in the woman making food for their family and whomever they love to get them through the harsh winter months. That's kind of how it started. And so she really learned how to cook just through watching her mother cook.

And measuring spoons was not a thing. I had a teacher how to use it for this cookbook. A lot of those cooking methods and whatnot is just taught intuitively and just measured by the handful, by the spoonful, no real measurements. Did she think you were being unduly strict or disciplined to have the temerity to use a tablespoon? Yeah.

At first, she couldn't take it seriously. It felt almost like they were toys to her. And when I told her how to level a tablespoon, because when I told her use one tablespoon, she would use like a heaping tablespoon. And I'm like, oh my, that's not a tablespoon then. And then I showed her how to level it with a knife. And she was like, oh my goodness, this is so ridiculous. Yeah.

But the funny thing is that after we finish this cookbook, she actually uses measuring spoons now because it gives you the precise, consistent recipes that deliver that same delicious taste.

recipe that you would have to guess with freehanding and adjust constantly. So she was learning from you and you were learning from her, as I guess you always are. Can you tell us how you first decided what you wanted to translate from your mom's hands to this cookbook and mainly American audience? We really wanted to pass down recipes that would carry on the traditions and legacy of Korean cuisine.

You know, I'm Korean American and I'm starting to lose how to speak Korean just by living here. And of course, I can become fluent in it. It's my fault that I'm not fluent. But I learned that if I don't put in the effort to learn Korean, my ability to speak this language and pass it down, it's going to diminish.

And that's the same with food. If we don't learn how to make kimchi the way our Omas make it, part of our identity, I felt like, would diminish as well. And so it was very important to us that we share recipes that has been passed down through generations and to continue that

Because if not now, then when? Sarah, I think that kimchi is one of those things that most people know about Korean food. It's this fermented and salted vegetable dish, a staple and known to be very spicy. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about it. Kimchi is our identity. It's our pride. And it's a huge staple of our cuisine, if not the biggest staple. It's a food that we're incredibly proud of. And that pride comes from what kimchi did for us.

It's the one food that they ate when they couldn't afford white rice. It's the one food that they ate after the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. My mom only grew up eating kimchi, and so it carries a lot of weight and significance that I want people to know and I honor in the book. And what's special about the kimchi recipes that you have in the book?

I think there's two things. I think the first one is that we have two kimchi recipes that particularly use napa cabbage. Napa cabbage kimchi is what most people are familiar with, the one that you can get at grocery stores, the one that you get at Korean barbecue. It's usually cut, but in our book, we have the cut version and the uncut version. The cut version, the taste is pretty similar across the board. Every Korean cook has their own twist on it, depending on the region that they come from.

But we also have an uncut version in the book known as pogi kimchi. And this kimchi, when you taste it, and when I first tasted it, it was so traditional. And I knew instantly this was something that my grandma made. And when my mom finalized that recipe and shared it with my dad, my dad said, this brings me back to the old days when we struggled, but all bonded over kimchi that got us through the harsh winter months.

And so I think those two, kimchi being in the book, really honors the cuisine and what kimchi did for Koreans. And I also think she uses fresh Fresno chili, which imparts a very refreshing spiciness that complements the more neutral spiciness of gochugaru, Korean chili pepper flakes. And so whenever we have relatives from Korea come over and they try our kimchi, the first thing that they ask, even though they're from Korea, is,

is what is in your kimchi because it's just so amazing. And it's the fresh chili pepper. For people in the United States, how is kimchi best served, especially if you're a bit of a spice wimp? So I would say kimchi is best served the way maybe Korean kids are introduced to it. Korean moms run it underwater.

so that they can dilute the spice a bit. And that's how we kind of become accustomed to kimchi. And as we get older, that spiciness becomes dull to us and we don't taste that spice. So that's one way a beginner can enjoy kimchi. But we also include kimchi that doesn't include any gochugaru in the kimchi, such as our dongchimi kimchi, which is water radish kimchi. So aside from kimchi, what's a good starter recipe for anybody who wants to cook Korean food?

I would say the seasoned soybean sprouts that has imitation crab in it, which is my mom's little spin on it. But all you do is you seam the soybean sprouts so that they're cooked and then you drain it and then you squeeze the soybean sprouts and then you mix in the ingredients, which is chopped up green onions, sesame seed, fish sauce, garlic, gochugaru, and shredded up imitation crab. You just gently mix it up and that's it. And you serve that room temperature?

Room temperature or cold. Okay, so this is like one of the dishes, if you go to a Korean restaurant, that they put out first, one of the great little appetizers in a small bowl.

Oh, yes, the banchan, which is the, yeah, the small dishes. If you go to Korean barbecue, it's the many small dishes that make up the majority of the table. And you have a recipe for fried chicken here. Now, it might be interesting. I'm guessing that you probably have tried southern fried chicken since you've been here, or at least Kentucky fried chicken. And I wonder if you can compare what Korean fried chicken is like.

I would say the taste when it comes to Korean fried chicken is that there's a little bit of Asian influence in there that's very subtle. So when it comes to our Korean fried chicken, there's a little bit of MSG seasoning salt, which is an ingredient that we truly respect and talk about in the book that destigmatizes the stigma behind this ingredient.

We also use just a pinch full of curry powder. You won't taste the curry in our Korean fried chicken, but it adds this umami nuanced taste that's almost unidentifiable. But you notice something's there that you just can't name what that ingredient is.

And then we also use Korean frying mix, which is a flour mix blend that has these perfect seasoning of baking soda and onion powder and garlic powder that just seasons the chicken just right. But I think also us Koreans, we also soak our chicken that has bone in it in milk and then we rinse our chicken. And what difference does that make?

For Koreans, we can identify this gamey smell that chicken and beef or whatever protein may have. And I know chicken and beef aren't gamey meats, but there's this scent that my mom taught me because I wasn't convinced at first. I was very much convinced by, I guess, maybe the American way that we don't have to rinse the chicken. We don't have to do the milk because so-and-so says so online. Mm-hmm.

And then my mom did a side-by-side test and she was like, do you smell that? And I'm like, yes, I do smell that. That's what I mean by what gamey means is what my mom said. And then she showed me hours later when she soaked it in milk and she's like, can you smell it now? And I couldn't smell it. And that's when I learned that I shouldn't question my mom. So it gets rid of that gamey scent, but it also makes the chicken very tender.

I think your mom is a force. I mean, a loving force, but a force. She is for sure a force and just such a wise person. Yeah. That's Sarah Ahn, who, along with her mother, Nam Soon Ahn, is the author of Umma, A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes. So nice to speak with you. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you.

And that's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think. You can write to us at bookoftheday at npr.org. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Tyler Bartlim, Sarah Robbins, Elena Burnett, Christopher Intagliata, Karen Miller-Medsen, Todd Munt, Emiko Tamagawa, Julia Corcoran, and Kira Wakib. Yolanda Sangwini is our executive producer. Thanks for listening. ♪

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