Kimchi Stew

for you, and you, and you

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Hello to my fermented cabbages!

Diving right in: Morning sickness is a strange thing. On my first go-round, with Leo, I was mildly queasy a lot of the time, but it wasn’t anything a bagel couldn’t fix. I craved tuna melts with bacon, too, until one day I didn’t.

With Cosmo, it was worse. I felt seasick all day, every day. I’m not a barfer, but wished I was, wished I could. Complaining about morning sickness to a doctor or midwife is futile—they clearly don’t care, and just tell you it will go away around 16 weeks. That is literal months. The cure is in time’s hands, and when you feel like barfing, every minute is exhausting.

Barefoot and pregnant, the night before Cosmo arrived.

The “morning” part is also a fallacy. I was nauseated on the subway, at work, in bed, in the car. I kept a sad little baggie with a piece of fresh ginger in it, and I would bite on that if I was out and about and a wave of blargh came over me. I also needed grapefruit spritzers. Not lemon. Not orange. Fresh grapefruit juice and seltzer, on ice. That helped. Pretzel rods. I’d be dead if it weren’t for pretzel rods. My mom told me the salt was good. Salt is always good. Sucking on a pretzel rod was just distracting enough.

The thing about me is that I think there’s a food that will make me feel better even when I don’t feel like eating. Furthermore, if there is a craving, it should be honored. And, as a woman in the first 16 weeks of her second pregnancy, there was a dominant craving for kimchi jigae.

Conveniently enough, at the time I was working a few blocks from a little Korean counter-service lunch spot that made a very generous and very spicy bowl of kimchi jigae. This store, now a juice bar near Union Square, had cafeteria energy and a soulless design, but the food was legit. The kimchi stew was served in a hard melamine bowl, and delivered on a tray with little cups of banchan and a bowl of rice. For whatever reason, my nausea was conquered by eating spicy, sour, hot soup jumbled full of kimchi, bits of pork and tofu, and slippery discs of tteok. Don’t forget the rice—a metal bowl of steamed, shiny, lightly sticky, and pertly domed rice.

I liked to eat my kimchi jigae by picking up some rice in my spoon, and then dunking the spoon into the stew, flooding it with ochre broth and leaves of kimchi. I eat it that way today, in fact. Spoon after spoon, when I was working my way to the bottom of that bowl, my nausea was nonexistent. The cure was infallible, but it was also temporary. Because as soon as the jigae was no more, the nausea would percolate anew, just in time for my little walk to the train and back home to Brooklyn, where it was likely I’d need to suck on a random piece of ginger again. You never know what kind of dank smells might be ascending from the tracks.

It ended up being true what my midwife said—one day I woke up and didn’t feel ill anymore. My cravings from then on were for giant, crunchy salads, falafel and sabich sandwiches, and ice cream. So much ice cream. Now when I see giant, 15-year-old Cosmo randomly snacking on kimchi out of the fridge, I love to think my first trimester nausea antidote had something to do with it. More likely he just knows a good thing when he tastes it.

xoCLM

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Recipe: Oct. 27, 2024 

Pork And Beef Stew With Ginger, Tomato, And Kimchi

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Pork and Beef Stew with Ginger, Tomato, and Kimchi 

Adapted from That Sounds So Good

4 to 6 servings

If I’m going to eat a rich, meaty stew, I’m always going to go for something with spice and tang over a sticky red wine braise. I had the classic Korean dish kimchi jjigae, a pork and tofu kimchi stew, on my brain when working on this. In all its funky, spicy, rich glory, kimchi jjigae was the only dish that cured my morning sickness when I was pregnant with Cosmo. For that alone, I’ll love it forever. This stew leans heavily on the spice and fermented flavors of kimchi and amps that up with anchovy, sour-sweet tomatoes, and the brightness of ginger to make a very belly-warming meal.

1 pound beef chuck, cut into 2-inch pieces

1 pound pork shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces

Kosher salt

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 bunches scallions

2-inch piece ginger (about 2 ounces)

1 (14-ounce) jar cabbage kimchi

1 (15-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon gochugaru

3 anchovy fillets packed in oil, drained

Cooked rice, for serving

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Pat meat dry and season on all sides with salt. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high. Add the oil. Working in batches if necessary, cook beef and pork until well browned all over, 16 to 18 minutes per batch. Lower the heat if the pan looks like it is scorching or the oil starts smoking.

Meanwhile, slice the scallions crosswise; set aside. Peel the ginger and slice it ¼-inch thick. Pour liquid from kimchi into a measuring cup. Stick a pair of kitchen shears into the kimchi jar and roughly chop kimchi. Pour liquid from the can of tomatoes into kimchi juice. Use shears to cut tomatoes into ½-inch pieces.

Transfer browned meat to a large plate (reserve the rendered fat in the pot). Add the scallions and ginger to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the scallions are very soft and browned and ginger is starting to soften, 6 to 8 minutes (lower the heat and cover the pot if vegetables are browning too quickly). Add the gochugaru, anchovies, and kimchi-tomato liquid. Bring to a simmer, stirring and scraping up any browned bits. When liquid is slightly reduced, about 3 minutes, return meat to pan and add chopped kimchi and tomato pieces. Stir to combine. 

Add enough water to come three-quarters of the way up the meat and vegetables. Increase the heat if needed to bring the liquid to a simmer.

Cover the pot and transfer to the oven. Cook until the meat is totally shreddable, 90 to 110 minutes. Serve with rice.

From the Market

Beef chuck

Pork shoulder

Scallions

Ginger

Spin It

• Use all pork meat, or all beef

• Replace scallions with 1 small onion or 2 shallots

At Home

Kosher salt

Vegetable oil

Kimchi

Canned tomatoes

Gochugaru

Anchovies

Rice

Spin It

• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes can replace the gochugaru

• 2 tablespoons fish sauce can replace the anchovies

• Cooked wheat noodles, such as ramen, can replace the rice