Olivia Piepmeier

Kimchi Hash

← Recipes

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Categories: pantry main
An illustration in marker of a frying pan from above. There are clearly 4 eggs in there, but what's around it is rather abstract mix of browns, yellows, red dots, golds, and bronze.

inspired by NYTimes Cooking

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper
  • 1 good sized red onion, thinly sliced (subjective as always - any onion(s), or a small onion + shallot…all work!)
  • head of garlic, minced
  • 8-10 oz kimchi, chopped
  • 2 pounds potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
  • 2 eggs per person

Toppings

  • A scallion or some chives, finely chopped (optional but encouraged!)
  • Funkaise (a mix of mayo, gouchujang sauce or paste, fish sauce, and ketchup - in order of most to least amount)

Directions

  1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high. Add a glug of oil and the onion(s) and a sprinkle of salt. Cook until softened.
  2. Add the garlic, kimchi, potatoes, some salt, and a reasonable glug of oil, and toss to combine.
  3. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 5 minutes (totally fine if you don’t have a cover for the skillet but it does help the cook time).
  4. Stir, re-cover, and cook until the potatoes are tender. I go through several rounds of uncover, stir, stab, re-cover, uncover, etc.
  5. When the potatoes seem cooked, give it one last stir and make 4 divots (assuming you’re making 4 eggs..and..honestly, without a BIG pan, it’d be hard to do more than 4 at a time) without reaching the bottom of the pan. Drizzle a little of the oil into each divot and crack an egg into each.
  6. Salt & pepper each egg.
  7. Cover and cook for 4 to 5 minutes or until eggs are just set.
  8. Individual servings get a sprinkle of scallion/chives if using, and mayo!

(I consider a “serving” two eggs and a reasonable amount of hash. For this house, that means we usually have leftovers. Sometimes we eat the rest without eggs, sometimes we fry eggs to go with reheated hash. I’ve been too lazy to think about reheating via pan and cooking the eggs in the above manner but you certainly could!)

Thoughts

As high-produce season slows down, I’m trying to balance pantry meals with those emphasizing the fall produce that will essentially be all we have until……May? Though someone could argue potatoes are fall produce and that’s fine. Anyway, this is an excellent pantry meal with a rather small ingredient list that feels like you’re eating like a king. I blame this entirely on the powerhouse ingredient of kimchi. I recently hit the jackpot in finding that the Whole Foods near one of our home airports carries the “reserve” kimchi from Mother in Laws. Angelic light shone down from above as I grabbed all the jars I could. I wish I could find a local alternative but this stuff is golden. It’s worth an extra errand coming from the airport a couple of times a year.

The blurb above the original recipe suggests Kewpie mayo, which I haven’t had and haven’t felt like finding. Instead I invented “funkaise” though I feel certain something inspired it. A no-recipe recipe that’s honestly so funky on its own, I can’t even test it to make sure it’s right. It just is.