The Korean Table: From Barbecue to Bibimbap 100 Easy-To-Prepare Recipes

by Taekyung Chung, Debra Samuels, Heath Robbins (Photographer)

This Korean cookbook makes it easy to replicate the authentic tastes of Korean food — even for beginners!

Korean food is poised to become America's next favorite Asian cuisine to adopt. It is rapidly gaining popularity in the US for its robust and intensely flavorful dishes like Korean barbecue (known as bulgogi), kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage), and bibimbap rice bowls.

The Korean Table shows American cooks how to replicate the exciting and authentic flavors of Korean cuisine at home using fresh ingredients available from their neighborhood grocery store or farmer's market. In this Korean cooking book, Chung and Samuels, a Korean and American author team, guide home cooks through the process of making Korean meals without fuss and multiple trips to specialty markets, or worse, expensive online shopping.

Along with showing cooks how to create a complete Korean meal from start to finish—including recipes such The Korean Table will also show cooks how to add the flavors of Korea to their homestyle cuisine in numerous quick and easy ways—via condiments, side dishes, salad dressings, sauces and more. With this cookbook, filled with over 100 recipes, everyone's kitchen can incorporate a spread of delicious Korean meals for all to share and enjoy.

The Korean Table presents the best of Korean cooking for beginners.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food, Food and Drink

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2008

Reviews

[James]

A decent ethnic cookbook that emphasizes Korean home style versus fancy restaurant cooking. Most of the recipes are simple and straightforward, no massive ingredients list or fancy prep. And while it's easier to get specialty food items nowadays, the authors show a large of substitute ingredients that can be used in place of the Korean version. There are a large number of vegetarian recipes including entrees, useful for those of us who don't eat a lot of meat at home. Most of the recipes are new to me, though I have eaten many of them at a local Korean place were grandma cooks, mom serves and the granddaughters play. I don't have a good Korean cookbook in collection, I may breakdown and buy it.

[Png]

Love Korean cuisine (Bibimbap and Japchae are my favorites). Would give Roasted Korean Hot Wings a try. There are traditional recipes to try from and are easy to follow.

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ]

If you are looking to learn more about Korean cooking, this would make a nice introductory cookbook.

The first section of the book does a fantastic job of explaining the key ingredients used in Korean cuisine, first rate really. As you get into the recipes, they are well written and provide a good starting point for learning a cross section of various Korean dishes, kind of akin to dipping a toe into the Korean cuisine pool. The recipe/photo ratio is great, although there are a few "artistic" shots where the front items are in focus and the back items are all fuzzy, so you can't really see what the back dish is supposed to look like.

Cooks more experienced with this cuisine aren't likely to learn anything new from this book, and if you fall into that category I'd recommend trying one of Maangchi's wonderful cookbooks instead.

[Nadina]

There were lots of pictures, and I definitely found a couple of recipes that interested me. A few of the basic things did not have pictures (like rice, but really, we dont need to see a picture of rice to know if we will cook it or not) so that's okay.
I like that it had a list of basic pantry/kitchen ingredients and tools at the beginning of the book, even if you dont necessarily need them all depending on the recipes you want to make.
Personally, due to the amount of seafood, beef, and tofu based recipes, there are only a couple of things that would interest me personally, but I see others might like them and the fact there were plenty of pictures is why I give this a 4 not a 3.

[Gennifer]

I didn't find the writing in this cookbook very interesting but the pictures are beautiful. The recipes sound delicious but very intimidating; so much so that I don't think I'm going to try any of them except maybe a sauce or two. Most of the recipes seem pretty labor intensive with unusual ingredients.

[Dray]

There has been an explosion of cookbooks, many quite good, covering Korean cooking. This is a great beginner to intermediate cookbook on foods that most Americans are familiar with but do not eat everyday or even every month. Being a vegetarian, I was pleased with the inclusion of veggie based recipes in almost every category. Worth reading.

[Rachel]

I did not know too much about Korean food, aside from their most famous noodle dish Japchae and Korean BBQ, so I decided to give this book a gander to see if I could learn some more about it. I like that it was written by a native Korean who cooks professionally and lives in Japan and an American who discovered Korean cooking through her teacher, the other author of the book. The book gives a solid foundation for learning about Korean cooking and how it was developed. It is similar to Japanese food, in that it is based on five colors, though I believe it differs in the five tastes. The reader is introduced on how to stock your Korean pantry and a starter kit to Korean Cooking, which include rices, sauces, pastes and dressings which form the building blocks of each recipe in the book. Though I am pretty familiar with Asian food and ingredients, I've never eaten Daikon Radish, however the Daikon Kimchi is intriguing and might be my entrance into making homemade Kimchi. Aside from the basic sauces and pastes, I would be interested in trying the Egg Custard Beef Soup, Pan Fried Tofu with Mushrooms, and their recipe for Japchae (as the last time I tried to make it, it failed). 4 stars.

[Renegade Librarian Extraordinaire]

Over the past several years, I've become a big fan of Korean dining, so I'm always on the lookout for cookbooks featuring this type of cuisine. And I can easily say that this is probably the best one I've come across so far! The recipes I've are delicious and easy to follow (even if some are multi-step), and the photos are very helpful if you're a visual person (like I am). All that's all good, but probably coolest part for me has been comparing recipes I already know to the book's variations. For example, the Bulgigi recipe in the book is slightly different from the traditional family one I learned from my partner (who got it from his mom, who got it from his grandmother who learned it from her mother...and so on back). I'm looking forward to trying new recipes and will probably end up purchasing the book instead of just renewing it again.

[Katie]

I don't normally review cookbooks but this was so good I feel compelled to write a short plea to everyone reading: get this book!

Korean food is incredibly good, good for you, and, it turns out, simple! In flavored, techniques, and preparation. You probably have most if what you need to make a great lunch of bancan (vegetable side dishes) and namul. Add rice and some freshly seasoned and grilled meat and you have dinner. Or lunch. Or even breakfast.

If you need me, I will be sitting at my table eating Korean food for the next year.

[Madelyn]

Great cookbook! I want to buy it.

[Corina Neagoș]

YUMMY recipes!

[Laureen]

tried many recipes and they were delicious! and the pics were good

[Greymalkin]

I love the big color pictures of every dish but the two kimchi recipes we made were not good. Bland with an odd flavor. None of the other recipes really grabbed me either.

[Eve Koenig]

Good introduction to Korean cooking. Beware the Korean red pepper flakes!

[Kathleen]

Nice selection of basic banchan, to get one started. Three or four variations of pancake.

[Katrin]

Awesome book for korean food lovers.)