I first cooked Korean food about a year ago when I made a Bulgogi which is a personal favorite. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with Korean food, though there are a large number of Korean BBQ joints not too far from where I live but it’s been a while since I’ve stepped into on of those smoky meat meccas. When searching for dishes to check off South Korea, bulgogi kept coming up as the go-to Korean dish but I just knew there must be other options that would appeal to my current cravings. Enter Japchae-a similar beef dish that leans on vegetables and something I’d never had (nor heard of) before…sweet potato glass noodles. And because Amazon tends to like to sell ingredients like this in large multi-packs, I’ll have another opportunity to make them at some point.

Japchae translates loosely to “mixed vegetables” which is definitely something this dish boasts a fair amount of. I erred on sticking with bell peppers, carrots, spinach, and onions, though traditionally it also includes marinated shitake mushrooms. I’ll be honest, when I started cooking the sweet potato glass noodles, I was a bit turned off by their odd gray color. They were kind of spongey and odd and I wasn’t sure how they would work out. The result? They were a perfect blank canvas for taking on the flavors in this dish. The end result was a savory noodle dish that Matt thought would be a perfect winter dish. We kicked it up a bit with some Gochujang sauce. Yum.

Recipe I used: https://mykoreankitchen.com/korean-glass-noodle-stir-fry-japchae/

Overall Level of Effort: 2

Skill Level: Beginner

Would Make it Again: Yes

Additional Notes: The instructions in this recipe were very specific about cooking each element on its own, removing from the pan, and then moving on to the next item. I didn’t do this because I didn’t feel it was a good use of my time and so I cooked the vegetables all at the same time and then removed before cooking the meat and then threw in the noodles towards the end to combine. I think that method worked out perfectly fine. I also omitted the egg from the recipe due to preferences on my end. So yes I took some liberties with this recipe but I was so pleased with the end result that I don’t think it mattered all that much.