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If your hands are covered in glittering green flecks of roasted seaweed, you’re doing it right. (Whatever you do, don’t wipe them on your pants.)
Seaweed hands have become a new part of my dinner routine thanks to Eric Kim, the New York Times food columnist and author of Korean American, one of my favorite cookbooks of the year thus far. While reading the stories about his mother’s kimchi fridge(s) and cooking your way through the recipes, you begin to feel like you’ve been friends with Kim since childhood. He’s funny and warm and also a great teacher. Each of his almost-100 recipes, which pull from his Korean upbringing in Atlanta, are easy to follow, extremely adaptable, and always delightful.
The second I got a PDF of his book, I started cooking from it, ignoring all the other books I was supposed to be reviewing. And every recipe I’ve made so far, from the gochujang-and-brown-sugar-dusted cauliflower to the Sprite-marinated short ribs, has got stuck in my head like a boppy pop song.
But none as much as the creamy bucatini with roasted seaweed, or gim (김)—which is the Korean word for an edible seaweed also called laver. You can buy gim in full-size sheets or in those small $2 plastic snack packs. Not to be confused with Japanese nori, gim is roasted and brushed with sesame oil and salt, so it has a rich nutty flavor. Coincidentally, Kim is a homonym for gim, which he points out in an essay in the book as if to say: We are one.
“Everyone thinks of kimchi and gochujang when they think of Korean cooking,” he continues, “but for me nothing tells the story of [South Korea] like seaweed,” which grows prolifically along the country’s shorelines. The rectangular slips of gim, he writes, “shatter into a thousand salty pieces as soon as you pop them in your mouth.”
Gim appears in Korean American like a recurring celebrity cameo on a long-running sitcom, lighting up the room with its magnetic presence. (Also kind of literally—the stuff makes everything it touches shimmer.)
Some of gim’s greatest hits in Korean American: It’s incorporated with butter into grits and gochugaru-seasoned shrimp in a clever take on the Southern staple; it’s sprinkled atop avocado toast and kimchi fried rice for extra oomph; it’s whisked into the fish sauce vinaigrette for a Little Gem salad; and, perhaps the most ingenious use, it’s in a sour cream dip for roasted potatoes that will have ol’ sour cream–and–onion dip shaking in its boots.
But that bucatini! It’s my new “pantry pasta”—that cliché yet accurate branding for pasta made with whatever’s lying around, usually anchovies or other tinned fish, canned this and that, red chile flakes. None of those ingredients achieves what gim does, though, which is why I’m here writing about it. Together with a garlic-and-cream sauce, Kim writes that the seaweed creates a rich, shrimp Alfredo flavor—without the shrimp. It’s deeply savory and instantly comforting.
It’s easy to play with too. Last night I added a few handfuls of spinach to wilt at the end for extra greenery and gochugaru for subtle heat. I noticed a BA commenter who added basil and suggested lemon zest. Kim himself has a more elaborate version in the Times with asparagus and red onion. Make it your own—just make it often.
