Poured Over: Eric Kim on Korean American

“What’s really interesting about taste memory is it’s not that you’re trying to necessarily replicate the dish exactly as it was, I think you’re actually just trying to replicate your memory of it, because your memory is always going to be the platonic ideal of it.” Eric Kim has a delightful approach to food, and his debut cookbook is a charming exploration of the Korean American table. He joins us on the show to talk about home cooking and how our family stories connect to food, representation (and how his parents landed in Atlanta), the politics of spam, his pantry must-haves, making kimchi, finding joy in a creative space, testing recipes with his mom, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (episode)

Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home by Eric Kim

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)

Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee

Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and one of my favorite favorite guys on the planet is with us today. And if you are hungry, put us on pause, go grab a snack, because Eric Kim is the author of Korean American, a cookbook that you need now. And the subtitle is food that tastes like home. So Eric, I’m gonna ask you to introduce yourself to listeners, because this is your debut.

Eric Kim: This is my debut. Hello, everyone. My name is Eric Kim. I’m a food writer, I currently write on the food desk at the New York Times as a staff writer. And yeah, I wrote a book about my family. And now all these people know my family’s names. And maybe even their faces, which is just kind of wild and bizarre. But I’m here talking to this wonderful woman who I met at a party once.

B&N: And then we got to cook together. That spreadsheet that we used what it was 14 pages or something it was how many dishes did we make that second time we were hanging out. And we were cooking, we borrowed a friend’s kitchen, because you and I both have tiny New York kitchens.

EK: It was wild. But we made 11 to 12 dishes, potentially more, you were so helpful with like all the chopping, and I felt like an executive chef or something that was really fun. That was fun.

B&N: It was great. But also I like taking the time to step back and do the knife work. And really, I find it very meditative when you’re chopping vegetables and just sort of zoning out and doing that. And then you get a very good thing at the end. And actually, I made egg salad based on your deviled egg recipe for dinner last night. Because I was like, You know what, I don’t really feel like making everything look pretty and taking up space. But I want the flavor. And this is something that I love about Korean American cookbook, because you can just play with everything. I mean, I have such a tiny kitchen, I don’t cook a lot of meat at home in New York, because I don’t need my sweaters to smell like pork chops. And I mean, this is the reality of why we live here. We don’t spend a lot of time at home. But there are a couple of things I learned from the book. And one is the son-mat, which is what you call hand taste. I guess it translates to hand taste. And it’s not something I ever thought about. But I think it’s really important before we set up this conversation that we’re going to have about this beautiful cookbook. Can you explain what that is?

EK: Yeah, son-mat translates to hand taste. And it’s sort of this food word in Korean that refers to someone’s signature touch, you can have a recipe and do it perfectly. But if it’s not made with that person’s hands, it probably won’t be the same. I love that notion because I think it describes a style of cooking that the book is sort of trying to teach, which is the way my mom cooks, which is without measurements, it’s with instincts, someone who can season food perfectly. And I take a lot of pride in having some son-mat, I think in my food. I think my way of sharing it with people is a little different. It’s like a recipe, but I take a lot of pride and food that people take a bite of. And their first reaction is kind of like whoa, I like surprising people. And I think that’s what my mom does as well with her food.

B&N: And one of the things I really appreciate about the work that you do too is and I’m going to rely on a Japanese phrase for a second because I know it exists in Korean. I just don’t know what the word is. But umami. Yeah, everything you do, like the umami is such a delight. And I don’t know how to really describe it umami, except for it’s like a fifth sort of flavor is the best way to describe it. It’s like this thing that you know it when you taste the best way I can explain it.

EK: It describes deliciousness, which is different from saltiness. Salt can accentuate it, but I describe it as savoriness really, and in Korean, there is a word for it. It’s not as like fashionable or in the vernacular, in English as umami is but gamchilmas. I actually thought, you know, the word — because my mom’s test for whether a recipe was worth passing. And being in the book was whether and I had this savoriness and I thought she said sumgyeojin, which kind of doesn’t make sense anyway, because that actually means like, I think it means like shrouded or hidden. But I thought it was referring to like, you know, something that grabs your tongue. And so I was like going off on interviews saying, oh, yeah, gamchilmas, which is like the Korean word for umami. And then I’m halfway I realized it was gamchilmas, which refers to savoriness. Anyway, I think it’s like an important feature of Korean cuisine, for sure. And I wrote about it in The Times, seaweed is something that really lends that kind of savoriness. But I don’t know about you, but I really like the kind of umami that is quieter and it’s kind of soft. You can eat a lot of it, because you know, there’s only so much of like, miso glaze tomato mushroom like pasta that you can take. It’s like strong flavors. But um, I like to use like a tomato in a soup. And that was unexpected umami. I’m really into tomatoes right now, obviously, because it’s tomato season, but I just got back from Italy as well. And, wow, what a powerful ingredient.

B&N: And when you have something that’s right, genuinely right. And yeah, so you know, I mean, I have a farmers market right across the block from my office. So I’m incredibly fortunate in a lot of ways. But when you taste something that is genuinely ripe and tastes the way it’s supposed to in season, you can’t compete with that. Yeah, there’s just there’s nothing at all to compare with that.

EK: Sure. I really like what you said, like what you said about the egg salad, because what you did with that. So basically, there’s a deviled egg recipe. And Miwa did an egg salad that was flavored with that, which makes a lot of sense. Because I want people to learn things from the book, it’s, I think it’s supposed to give people ideas, like there’s a Gochujan butter that I based, a ribeye with, but I want people to taste that and be like, whoa, that could be a pork chop, that could be a piece of salmon it can be I think what’s important about cooking is taking those lessons and applying them elsewhere. Because even though the model is the way the recipe writer wrote it, if you know that sesame oil and soy sauce and seaweed tastes great together, then you can apply that to all these other things like tuna mayo. That’s like a rice bowl that I put out recently, and it’s really popular. I just replaced the egg with tuna. Because that’s how I season my food. Sometimes I’m like, I want that taste, you know, the nutty, savory taste.

B&N: I don’t really follow recipes as they’re written. I mean, obviously, when we were doing that other thing. We were cooking directly from the book for lots of different reasons. But even then, I tweak, I play. Because part of it is sort of tasting as you go. And it’s not, I’m just also not great at following directions. It’s why I don’t bake actually, my partner bakes. Because he’s very precise. And he likes all of the things you have to think about. And I’m kind of like, No, I just, I want a thing. Which brings me to this idea of cooking from taste memory, which is something that you bring up early, in Korean American and I think certainly for me during lockdown, I was doing a lot of that. I was deconstructing meals that I’d had at restaurants that were closed. And I was just thinking about flavors that I wanted to eat and sort of just making it up as I went along. I wasn’t even necessarily looking at a cookbook. So can we talk about your taste memory and how because Korean American is not Korean. Korean American is its own thing. So let’s talk about your taste memories for a second.

EK: This book was very bizarre to write because I was in my late 20s when I was writing it, but I was writing about my 17-year-old self. And I was also in that bedroom. But it helped me access these memories. And I do think the book was an effort to document certain dishes from from my memory and from my parents memories. And like, you know, what’s really interesting about taste memory is it’s not that you’re trying to necessarily replicate the dish exactly as it was, I think you’re actually just trying to replicate your memory of it, because your memory is always going to be the platonic ideal of it. So yeah, that tuna noodle casserole that you had when you’re 12 probably tastes like crap. Now. I mean, no offense, but it depends on like, you know, whose it was or whatever. But like, like, I don’t think the point of the book was to honor like, the way it exactly was, it was to honor it, the past reflected through like, rose tinted glasses, a little bit. And so I think that’s sort of the tone of the book. And it helped with the writing, but it also just, it gave me an assignment. It was like, Okay, how do I replicate that curry rice that I really enjoy making in New York by myself? But, not your mom’s curry rice, you know, but then there are some dishes that are truly like mom’s like, stews and stuff like that. I don’t know, taste memory has always been important to me. It’s something that I’ve written about the pristine matalin before. I mean, everyone uses that phrase in food writing, but I like wrote a whole column about that concept of being surprised by the past. And I feel that a lot whenever I’m like boiling a chicken or something like that, but I think what’s been really lovely about this book is a lot of other Korean Americans are seeing themselves in it. And they’re, they’re like accessing taste memories that they had forgotten about as well. Because one one lovely thing is that we’re all sort of connected. And not just Korean Americans, but you know, Asian Americans and there are plenty of non Asians who cook from this book and, you know, remember certain things about the past because I’m also American. Yeah.

B&N: I think it’s important to have a touchstone like this, though, because Korean American and especially like Korean barbecue is a thing that people think about a lot. And you know, obviously I spend a lot of time in LA. And yes, we have very good Korean barbecue there. But it’s only one facet of the cuisine. So the idea like, you have a moment in the book, where you point out that vegetables are actually a very big part of Korean food. And I’m like, that is going to shock some people.

EK: While writing this book. I was also aware of like, the role of representation. And I think for me, I was just thinking about all of the Korean books out there. I don’t know just the general understanding of Korean cuisine. Align like a meat heavy cuisine, right? It didn’t align my daily home cooking with my parents and my family. It’s like, we actually don’t eat that much meat at home. That’s why the feast section is sort of a euphemism for like the meat section. The feasts that you’re shelling out for like stuff like that. But for us, the everyday food was just a lot of potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and stuff like that. I don’t know. Lots of rice, and fish, lots of fish. So I wanted to sort of make sure that came across like, this is what happens in people’s homes. And because it’s people’s home food, people’s home cooking, that doesn’t really get the airtime as much as restaurant food. So I when it comes to like a cuisine like this, I really want it to and I’m also someone who’s really nosy. The second I go into someone’s house. I like looking at people’s fridges. You betcha. I was like, every time I open that fridge or friend’s house when we were cooking there, I was like observing like, what kind of butter do they buy? And what kind of like ketchup do they use and mayonnaise people’s mayonnaise preferences is very political, not political, but it’s very, like, you know, fraught.

B&N: I keep two kinds of manners in my fridge. I have Japanese mayonnaise, and I have Hellman’s, honestly, because I like Hellman’s full fat. And if I’m going to eat mayonnaise, I want mayonnaise. But your parents came to the States in what 83? Early in the 80s. So early 80s. And they ended up in Atlanta. I mean, I’ve heard of people’s parents ending up in New York, or New Jersey or Los Angeles and areas around Los Angeles. But how did your parents end up in Atlanta?

EK: Yeah, the story is actually that my uncle young, he first into the United States, and he lived in New York for a few years. But then when it was time for all the other cousins to come over. It was sort of his job, I think, to pick the city. And he picked New York, North Carolina, because that was sort of like, I think he thought it’d be like a peaceful place to live. But she was correct. It’s a great childhood. But my the way my dad tells a story is he decided on Atlanta as well, because of a Julia Roberts movie. I can’t tell which one but Julia Roberts is from Atlanta. And I always like took great pride in that because I love her and but so yeah, he moved here first and then later brought over my mother, maybe a year or two later. So he came over first to sort of like, you know, make some money and have like a decent place where she could live. But, I think one thing that I really appreciate about this book is that part of my job was also to tell the story of Atlanta Koreans. And you know, there’s a reason there were so many Koreans in Atlanta, it was it was a hub for a lot of people. I want to read that it was because of the LA riots, like a lot of people in the 80s. They had to move. So they moved over to the other hub, which is Atlanta, and it’s not New York, it’s like a little like chiller, and quieter when you recognize that you’re actually just not that special, you’re part of a pattern. And I realized that what a Koreatown I was living in, that I grew up in, is pretty cool. I just really took it for granted.

B&N: I’ve always integrated spaces that I’ve lived in for very I grew up in the Northeast, and there were not a lot of any of us whether we were Korean American, Chinese American or Japanese Americans. there just weren’t a lot of us. And I remember my grandmother would send us nori. How do you pronounce gim? Okay. So nori is the Japanese equivalent, and my grandmother would ship us these giant cases of it from Japan because we couldn’t. I mean, sure, we could fly to Los Angeles and go to a Japanese grocery store. But when you’re living in a suburb of Boston, you’re totally dependent on grandma. Yeah, totally dependent on grandma for all of the delicious things. And you know, she’d send dried scallops, all of these things we just couldn’t get and I remember coming home from college in sort of the 90s and, there was not great grocery store sushi at the A&P and I was so it’s I did my mother’s like, you know, it’s not very good. Like, I don’t care. We’re just buying this on principle. We’re eating mediocre sushi from the A&P on the south shore of Massachusetts because we can, yeah, you know, and I still kind of have a fondness for not great grocery store sushi, which didn’t say much about my palate.

EK: I used to live on the west side. And there was like a Gristedes or one of those stores and it was definitely like grocery store sushi, where there was like, so much rice and the rice was overcooked, and I was like, only avocado and crab, but like, kind of like simple. And I was like, it almost felt homemade, because it was so poorly made. And that’s why like, it was very comforting. And I would get one of those with like a bag of chips. And that was my lunch for like, all through college was like what I ate because it was so light and easy.

B&N: Going back to taste memory and things like that. Like during lockdown. Really, all I wanted to eat was Japanese. And I was reverse engineering, a lot of Japanese stews, because the same thing in the US a lot of people think, oh, Japanese, it’s gotta be sushi. And I’m like, Well, no, actually, there are a lot of things you can do. But I started making a lot of kimchi fried rice at home as well, which meant there was spam in the house. And my partner would open the pantry and say, there’s spam. I’m confused. And he’s not Asian American, and that probably has a little bit to do with it. But we need to talk about spam for a second because people have wildly polarizing opinions of spam. Part of spams history in Korea obviously involves the American military and the Korean War. And I want to bring your grandparents into this conversation for a second because we can’t separate our family stories from our food.

EK: Yes, Spam was a plays an interesting role in our lives. Like as kids growing up in Georgia, I distinctly remember it. And I remember eating that specifically after long days at the pool. And I don’t know if you remember, like as a kid, like when you’re in a swimming pool, like that kind of hunger after swimming in a swimming pool. It was so like, it was like a raging hunger that I’ve never felt before. I think it’s because you’re just burning so many calories, but like, but you’re having fun. So you don’t you can’t tell that you’re getting hungry, so the meal afterwards is amazing. So that I just always remember like the white rice with the spam. And you know, eventually as I got older, I started eating kimchi in the stew but like even now I barely eat the kimchi. It’s actually about the broth and like the spam. But um, yeah, that for me, that was like comfort food. And then as I got older, my white friends thought it was gross. Weird that you eat spam. I didn’t know that. And then you know, you grew up kind of being ashamed of your food. And I think it took honestly, it took maybe two or three years ago for me to finally write write about it. I’ll just joke that it’s my lunchbox story. Everyone, every Asian food writer has to write one lunchbox story. And it’s like, Nope, that has become almost cheesy now and wrote, but I wrote about spam because I noticed this disjunction between Asians and non Asians who don’t grow up with it. And the difference in perception of spam can be explained through the history. So yeah, it was it was a really nice opportunity to talk to some really talented Chinese chefs, Filipino food writer. I have, of course, other Koreans in the piece. But, it’s really the war. And a lot of Asian countries have spam because of the connections from wars in their countries. And it was like, a military ration. And so in my family’s story, you can kind of pinpoint it to my grandmother. Like one story is that I heard that she had to get married quickly to her first husband so that she wouldn’t become a comfort woman for the Japanese army. It was like, that was like the pressure. It was like, those were the two options she had. And then, so I think that’s crazy. But she’s someone who’s interesting, because I only got to know her for maybe a couple decades, like she she died when I was in high school, but she did live with us sometimes. And when she did, anytime I put on a pot of like, ramen, she was always excited to eat that and I would put spam in it sometimes. And she liked the spam a lot, but I noticed that that was different from other Koreans from that generation should associate spam and food like that as a negative thing because it reminds them of the traumas of the war. And I thought I always thought that was really fascinating because younger generations love spam. And it’s like, given as a gift, you know, like big packages are super expensive. I think the cultural differences between the perception of spam are really political. And even to this day, I’ll publish like the recipe on the New York Times and it’s always some white person who’s like, oh, spam that’s like low quality food. I’m not going to make this recipe. And then, of course, people start to defend me because they’re like, Did you not hear him talk about the history of that. And it doesn’t matter how much you give people, they’re going to have their own perceptions about what a dish is. And this thing, it’s important not to yuck other people’s yums, because we don’t know the history there.

B&N: I mean, I had Kentucky Fried Chicken for the first time in Tokyo when I was kid like we didn’t. It was amazing. And I have a jolly bee down the street from me in Los Angeles, and you better believe I ate that fried chicken. So good. But also I thought okra was Japanese. Like we didn’t eat okra at home in Massachusetts. Like it was part of Japanese breakfast when my grandmother cooked for us. And I love Japanese breakfast. I love Taiwanese breakfast. I love Japanese breakfast. I love the Asian hotel breakfast, and you can just eat your way through the world. But I had no idea that, and a friend of mine in high school actually looked at me and said, That’s Flannery O’Connor food, what is wrong with you? And I’m like, Yeah, eat it here. I think of things as you know, white peaches like nothing match it. And I know you’re from Georgia, which is why I’m bringing it up. But like nothing matches, like one of those giant white peaches that you get as a gift in Japan because the flavor is perfect. And I’ve been chasing that my entire life. I’ve been chasing that perfect peach, and again, like, you know how it is. You’re always looking for that taste memory.

EK: And then when you when you find it, it’s really nice. But so many bad peaches out in the world. Actually just to be controversial, I would say the best peaches are in the Carolinas. I actually don’t think Georgia peaches are that good. But that’s just my thought. I always thought that was ironic, like never understood that. Even like Jersey peaches are like pretty good.

B&N: Okay, so I have another question for you though, because I didn’t know that American cheese could be a thing and ramen until Roy Choi turned me on to that I did not personally obviously I’m just a huge fan of his work. I keep shin ramen in my pantry. Right? Like this is one of the things that is always. I always have white miso with bonito, I always have you know…

EK: Yeah, I saw something on Tiktok or one of the like social media platforms. I think you should try this anyway. I don’t have a bag of shin ramen in my pantry because I always eat it like right away. But you take the dry packet. And put it in a heat proof bowl. And then you pour hot oil over it, kind of like you’re making like a Chinese style like noodle. It’s sort of like you’re making your own chili oil with the seasoning packet. I just think that sounds really good. And then you toss the noodles in that, a dry noodle dish instead of. I bet it’s super salty, but I bet it’s like really good. I really want to try that. So you should do that if you do have it.

B&N: There is actually Shin ramen in my entry right now. I might have to do it tonight. Let me know what you think there are certain things where I’m like, if I don’t have it in the pantry, you know, the way some people look at preserved lemons and then like I have to have this in my kitchen at all times.

EK: It’s very seasonal. Not in the way that sense. But like right now summer stuff. I really like them because the food is also like I’m really leaning into mayonnaise right now. I just always have like a backup jar of Hellman’s in my fridge just in case I run out of the first one. And what I like to do is I stir in some apricot preserves, or peach preserves, and chili powder. It sounds weird, but like these three things are my like, Go-tos right now and it kind of sounds like high food and maybe it kind of is sometimes but it’s, there’s something that I’m really having fun with right now with the rich Yoki creamy mayonnaise plus something fruity that also thickens whatever you add it to which is the apricot preserves. And they’re actually quite savory if you like add soy sauce and garlic powder anyway chili powder and chili powder as in like the powdery used to make chili the dish chili. I think it’s like a nice blend of it’s like cumin and paprika and all this stuff and those flavors just remind me of like a shopping mall, chain restaurant salad, you know, I like I use it to dip like my french fries. I use it to marinate chicken. It’s like really weird. I’m like in this weird mayo apricot jam, chili powder phase. But yeah, ordinarily, there’s like all this. There’s always American cheese. There’s always sesame oil. I have multiple vinegars all the time. You can kind of tell by my recipes. If you look at them in order, like what vinegar I didn’t run out of that week and it’s like oh my god, Eric Kim added sherry vinegar to this. It’s like because I ran out of rice vinegar and white vinegar in anyway. So I think I’m it’s fun to experiment with vinegars but that’s why I like to have a lot of amount of time because they’re all so different. Anyway yeah, I I keep my pantry pretty stocked but it’s also quite discerning, like I have obsessions and which is helpful because then you know, I use up the bottle instead of wasting anything. Yeah.

B&N: Oh, togarashi actually. Did I say that right? You know, I’m really having fun with chili peppers, like just different chilli powders. And that one is something that I just associate with budong. Like, my mom would always, like tempura udon, she would sprinkle it over, or not, whatever. But um, it would always just remind me of that. And so I thought I started just like adding it to everything. Because I’m just, sometimes it gets masked the it’s kind of a gentle chilli.

B&N: It’s really easy for it to get lost. It’s really really, I mean, it’s like a good Taiwanese chili oil. Those are wonderfully hardcore, and it’s just kind of like, Alright, um, I’m trying to read a reconstruct a salad that I love from a Taiwanese restaurant that went out, they’re doing something else now. And it’s 1000 year egg, and it’s pork floss, and scallions and chilli oil and soft tofu. And I’m just like, Okay, I think I can, but it’s also a matter of the measurements. Because if you go too far in one direction, so you’ve been developing recipes for a really long time. And you were thinking you were going to be an English professor, which I love because obviously, the care you take in your writing, it shows. But I want to talk about recipe development for a second because, like I said, I’m a pantser. I don’t, I don’t really follow recipes. I’ll read them to figure out if there’s something I want to steal basically.

EK: You call yourself a pantser?

B&N: I did I stole that from a writer. It’s a really great line. I was like, Yeah, I just, I really kind of do that. When I’m cooking. I really like the prep, I like the the chopping and all of that kind of thing. And you know, doing whatever the onions need to do. And then I’m just kind of like, let’s see, I’m a big one for I don’t know, what’s a couple of glurgs.

EK: Yeah. Not when I’m like testing officially or something. But um, yeah, I Okay, I had the best day yesterday, I was just cooking all day, I made kimchi from like, six in the morning to like, six at night. And, um, and I went to meet a friend for drinks. But even though it was like a 12 hour workday, it felt really leisurely. And there’s just, there’s this creative space that your brain goes into. And it’s so joyful. It’s like, you know, and it’s important that I get to do that in between my writing because they’re different parts of the brain, I think of it as different parts of the brain. And it’s nice to be on your feet once a while. And I met up with a friend. And, you know, I was an editor there, but she was like the unofficial like recipe developer. And I was like, so we talked about how these kinds of jobs have made us better cooks. And we’re kind of joking about how we don’t know if we got better because we were just doing it all the time, or if we were always okay at it. And we were just like posturing until people started trusting us. I think it’s a little bit of both, but um, it’s a little like imposter syndrome. But I really am grateful that this job has me cooking like this so vigorously, because I’ve just gotten better at everything. Like even my knife work. Like, when I made Christmas dinner last year. I did it in like two hours. And it was like this multicourse kind of like big everything. And I was like, That was so fun. And also kind of easy. And I remember feeling so like wow. Like, when you can see the extent of your skill getting better, really fine. So that’s really exciting, because, you know, it’s my job, but I also feel like I’m kind of going to culinary school, because I never got to go to that but I’m just doing it on like the New York Times’ dime, but um, that’s really nice.

B&N: Yeah, but they’re getting quite a lot in return. I don’t think anyone’s complaining. And also when you can get the timing right, and everything is done exactly when it needs to be and nothing’s freezing cold or nothing’s overcooked. And I didn’t understand that until I got older and I was. Thank you very much. But there were a couple of new year’s eve dinners that I did with my mother years ago where we did literally 30 course meals.

EK: How many people?

B&N: Between 15 and 40 depending I mean because we would just cook too much anyway because one of my family’s things is cooking before the New Year hits the Japanese new you know, Japanese New Year is January 1, but then you don’t cook for like three days after it so we would just do all of this cooking so we know stuff. We were doing things like, you know, Chinese noodles here and it was kind of a hodgepodge. The one rule my mother had, there was nothing with a face on it because I had American aunts and uncles of a certain age who were not going to handle that well, and she’s like, we can’t have some things and I was like, I want to do a whole fish. Like, no. We have aunties and uncles. We will just not be okay with it. So it was this weird sort of hybrid of, but there was always a little bit of 1957 in the room with the shrimp toast because I mean, I love shrimp toast.

EK: Yeah, it’s great. I used to do on with like, shitake mushrooms and scallions and then just like a nice and you barely cook the shrimp but you chop it up finely, and then you just like mound it on toast, it’s like really nice.

B&N: But then there were the years to where we just do hotpot with like 9000 kinds of fish and scholarships and everything else and people could just sort of wander in and out of the kitchen and take care of themselves as they as they felt like it and honestly hotpot was always easier, but the amount of chopping that we did going into it was not small.

EK: I think my family’s holiday dinners were always traditional, to be honest, like because we don’t eat that food ordinarily, so I want those creamy Scalloped Potatoes, I want that ham. My family expects a ham every year. We never eat turkey. So we do it for Thanksgiving. It’s just like, I think our participation in the tradition. I don’t know that it was ever because like we felt that it was our tradition, but that we wanted to eat it because we’d never allow yourself that kind of indulgence otherwise, but I was gonna say that, I love that you make a big dinner for New Year’s Eve because that’s the one time we don’t do that. But what I do like to do is maybe it just with my my cousin Becky or like with like one other person or someone you want to just like hang out with, and I just make a bunch of appetizers and that’s where the nori sort of the the seaweed deviled eggs came in because I was like, I want to make a crap ton of small bites and make a lot of it and because that kind of food is really fun to eat. And so I make like little sausage rules, which is when you get like just Pillsbury biscuit with sausage breakfast sausage, and like maple syrup and iG cheese as well and I roll it up. It’s really good. I should pitch that actually. It’s a good that’s my go-to. Everyone eats and they’re like, What is this? I’m like, I don’t know. It’s sort of like just like food like that you just really want to eat a lot of.

B&N: No I get it. I totally get it. Cast iron. We gotta talk about cast iron for a second. I think your first purchase from your first big job was a Dutch oven and I’m going to assume that it was a cast iron dutch oven because I love cooking in cast iron.

EK: It’s sad. It was actually an enameled yellow kind of like dutch oven for sort of like French phrases and stuff but I use it for everything, it was my biggest pot for a whole decade and just last month it was on my stove and I heard popping and I was like what’s that? The enamal, finally after 10 years, started like coming off. I think was a good run. I’m too sentimental to throw it out but it’s so huge and taking up space and it’s just sad. I even named it, its name was Alfred and it’s kind of like dead now which is wild and I don’t know. I think people are like it’s supposed to last a lifetime but you know I was a poor college student. It was definitely the cheapest dutch oven I could buy with my paycheck which was like very little less like an intern or whatever I was doing. Thanks for giving me the space to grieve Alfred.

B&N: Yeah, but cast iron also taught me to slow down when I was cooking because you can’t really like high heat and cast iron. You know there’s some stuff where you can get away with it but it’s much better if you just put something on low heat and let it go and then you get a really delicious thing at the end. So I mean, that’s my love of cast iron but rice cooker yes or no? Do you have an electric rice cooker?

EK: I love rice cookers I actually people are always like what kind of rice cooker Do you have? I was like I don’t want to endorse anything but my whole thing with rice cookers is actually I have a really crappy like $20 one and I love it because it’s a simple machine. You know what it does. It’s not the best rice but it’s like fine and it’s really fast. I’ll have rice in like 15 minutes versus a nicer one that’s gonna let it like steam and do all this crap and like, you know, but I do like making it on the stove as well but rice cookers are just wonderful. I think everyone should have one but I also understand people for people for whom it doesn’t seem like a good purchase because I’m sure you grew up like this too but rice is always there. It will fill out a meal any meal. Actually, it sort of became a point of everything becomes a point politics for me but I would write these recipes early in my career and, you know, I’d be shy about doing another recipe that said, served with white rice, because I’d be like, they’re supposed to be a little different. But I’m like, white people get to publish recipes served with crusty bread all the time. So like, why not? And then my boyfriend is, he’s like a lot of things, but he’s like Italian and German. And he eats a lot of bread. And, living with him is interesting. When I watch how much bread he eats. And it’s like, he eats it like I eat rice. And that makes sense, for like, a lot of cultural reasons. It’s like everyone has like their carbohydrate of choice. So it’s like, what if my recipes always just say, serve with white rice, because that’s like my go to, and I stopped being ashamed of it. And I think a lot of things taste better with white rice. Not brown rice.

B&N: Now, what’s the Korean equivalent of Gohan, which is the rice porridge?

B&N: No, no, no. Gohan Gohan is just basically day old rice, and you just cook it in a lot of water. But it is one of my favorite things. So good. And it’s just, I mean, Gohan is all about the things that you add to it. So like Gohan and pickles are Gohan and pork floss. There’s so many things. But there’s something about just this clean, crisp flavor about rice that’s been boiled in water for a while. And it’s so good. It’s just or, you know, even like salted peanuts, and Gohan is cool. I like that. I’ve turned my crisper drawer in my refrigerator in New York, it’s pickle central. So it’s literally full of like any kind of pickle you can imagine. And I know that comes from eating Japanese pickles when I was tiny.

EK: Japanese pickles are so good and so different.

B&N: Yeah, and I have to admit, like, the grosser the color, like the more fluorescent the dye is, the more satisfying the pickle is.

EK: I agree, but this is a key that you use beetroot to dye. You know, I like when the dye is there for a reason. It’s like a big is it an earthy flavor, it’s nice,

B&N: I still haven’t gotten to the cheeseburger kimbap I will get there. I mean, I’ve been talking about how I put American cheese in my ramen. So I will get there. But I want to talk about radishes for a second. Because sure, you know, a good radish, you can do a lot with a good radish. And again, this comes back to the idea that there are plenty of people who think Korean food is really all about the bulgogi and the Kobe and which is great. Don’t misunderstand me, but you do a lot with vegetables. And this is part of where your mom comes in. Because your mom has a crazy huge garden and you were working on these recipes with her. Even if they were hers, you’re still tweaking them because you can’t exactly replicate, you can’t say in the pages of the New York Times go for three glurgs and you’ll be fine. They’re not gonna dig that you have to really tweak this stuff. So what was it like working with your mom, when you can’t actually just head out the door when you want to because we were in lockdown?

EK: You know, we actually did get along, okay, if anything, she was annoyed me, I was like, really messy. And, you know, it was a time in my career too. I’d never been busier. And, which is really lovely, because you have family kind of helping you with dishes and grocery runs and just tasting, it was really important to have my mom there to taste my food. And, you know, it was nice to just get her honest feedback, like she had no reason to, you know, recode anything, and she’s not that type of person. So when she says something tastes bad, you really know, she means it, and you have to rethink it. And honestly, it was just such a lovely thing to have her around. Because anyone who does this for work knows how lonely it can be. And you’re in your head all the time. And after you’ve tasted a mango salad like 5000 times, it’s hard to tell after a while, like, all the acid is like shot your tongue, you’re just like, I can’t even tell anymore. And you know, the differences between the dishes are like, Should I add this or this or this much of this or this, much of that. And those nuances are hard to taste when you do it alone. So, you know, there are moments when I felt frustrated because it it really did feel I think a lot of people felt this way during the pandemic, and maybe you still do but I felt like I had just reverted and my role is back to being not just her son, but like also a 17 year old son. And so there are moments where I had to remind her, I’m an adult now, I’m 18 and then it’s like, I’m an adult now, I’m like 24 and then I’m an adult now I’m 27 and there’s a point where it’s like, I think I’m like an adult now. I’m like 30. So I think I’m actually an adult. I think part of that is really exciting. It’s a social contract, you and your mom have to like kind of rear you have to change your perception of each other. The roles have to change because I’m no longer just her son. It’s like one way work on this book for instance, like I’m so on a lot of people look to for to, with for authority on cooking. And she does too. She always has. It’s bizarre to change your relationship with someone who’s that important to you. It’s really rewarding too, it’s good.

B&N: Yeah, we got a really cool thing out of you’re working with your mom, like, I’m really clear. Like, we benefit in many, many ways from that. But how do you how do you reboot your tastebuds after you’ve shot? I mean, that was always something I wondered about for food writers in general, it’s like, don’t you ever hit a point where you’re just like, I cannot eat that again. I just can’t eat that again. Like, what do you do?

EK: You just have to step away. And you have to have like friends and neighbors around to eat all the food. But I was developing these chicken breast recipes for New York Times story last year, and I couldn’t eat a chicken breast for like, a year. Actually, I recently cooked a chicken breast. And it was one of the best chicken dishes I’ve ever had. It’s for like an upcoming column. And I just thought it was funny that it took me a year to get over it. So yeah, you have your phases. And also, I’m really grateful for my job. Because, they always tell me, sometimes you’re gonna have to do you know, stuff that you don’t want to do. But I always want to do what they want me like what they asked me to do. It’s like, do you want to develop an affogato column? And I’d be like, Yeah, that sounds fun. It’s like, what is the science behind an affogado and like, so I don’t know what they’re talking about. But I have a good time when I’m thrown different assignments, because they helped me to explore different parts of like, taste and so you know, I’m not necessarily going to be doing like a braise after braise after braise meat, you know, it’s going to be very diverse and that’s what I like about my job. And so it’s hard to get tired of foods because you just cycle through them. So I cycled through so many different foods. So it keeps it interesting, I think.

B&N: And like I said, we really benefit so please keep doing it. But there was one thing that I picked up on in Korean American that had never occurred to me before and I we have to talk about this for a second. Dried seaweed brittle. Dried seaweed. Have you actually done this? You were talking about it, and seaweed, I mean, there’s so many different kinds of seaweed that I love seaweed. I just snacking on dried seaweed makes me very, very happy. Seaweed brittle. I’m making a face.

EK: I was like, What are you talking about? I was like, Oh, you’re right. I caught a recipe. There was a recipe for savory oats, which were cooked in like, seaweed Dashi, and then the topping is this maple candied nut brittle that has like 20 grams of seaweed. And what happens is, it’s like,little nut clusters of like candied maple.

B&N: Okay, so the seaweed just sort of pops in. Okay, when you explain it like that, I understand. But I was like,

EK: It was also based off of the Korean punch line that already exists. It’s mostly you mostly buy it at the store. It’s called gim jaban, so I don’t know what jaban means, maybe means candy or something. But they’re little clusters of that gim, that salted sesame oil, like seaweed. And it’s just a it’s like a cluster of like crunchy savory goodness. And maple syrup is a great sweetener, because when that heats up, it gets hard. I think it’s a good idea. It’s just kind of complicated, and you have to work fast. And I worked hard to like perfect it, but I just didn’t see anyone really making it. But it’s in the crisper drawer, as you say. And what I mean by that is everything in my crisper drawer dies, it like goes there to die, basically, because, I’m never gonna see it again. But the apple that went into the back of the crisper drawer, I’m never going to see it again.

B&N: That’s why the pickles live there now. Yeah, that’s why all of the pickles and all of the pickle packaging live in the crisper drawer now because, I mean, you have to get a little creative in a New York apartment because otherwise it just gets chaotic.

EK: Actually, that’s why I’ve been really obsessive kimchi lately. It’s really fun to kimchi, anything because you’re just oh, those those vegetables are going bad. I’m gonna like salt them and put a sauce on them and then ferment them. And it’s like, I feel like my mom a little bit. She’s sort of like, what do I do with this? Okay, I’m just gonna kimchi it and it makes sense. It’s like, you’re extending the life of it, but it’s also really satisfying. It’s a form of fridge like clean up. You know, because like, it’s very satisfying. If you’ve ever made kimchi, your counter will be filled with produce like this, and then you end up with a tiny jar this big. And it’s like, really satisfying.

B&N: And then you can use it for kimchi fried rice, which is one of the best things you can eat. Speaking of eating, what’s for dinner tonight?

EK: I’ve been craving Indian food, which I love cooking but I haven’t had Indian takeout and months so I think I have like a free day. But I don’t know I have like actually have a cute tissue on the stove right now and developing a recipe. So I’ll probably have that for lunch and but I am excited to just like chill out and enjoy my Friday. It’s been a long, long but productive week and this is a nice way to end it. We have to hang out in person though soon.

B&N: We do. We do, and that’s a whole nother conversation. Eric Kim, thank you so much. Korean American is out now.