Kimchi Bokkeumbap
Like all forms of fried rice, kimchi bokkeumbap is straight-up home cooking: cozy, unfussy sustenance that’s rooted in the spirit of making do with what you have. At its core is leftover cooked rice stir-fried with the ruddy, gently spicy fermented napa cabbage that most Korean cooks keep on hand. But from there it can—and usually does—get personal, since that rib-sticking, umami-charged base is just the thing to capture all sorts of odds and ends. In any given kitchen, you’ll find the rice bulked up with ham, Spam, sausage, or seafood (fresh, tinned, or smoked); seasoned with gochujang, plum extract, or oyster sauce; dolloped with mayonnaise; topped with crumbled gim (dried seaweed); bundled in a gauzy omelet; cradling a runny fried egg; or teeming with gooey cheese.
“Every family has their own twist,” said Sun-Jung Yum. The daughter of South Korean immigrants, she grew up eating kimchi bokkeumbap with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yum’s family personalizes their kimchi fried rice with bacon, sausage, and pieces of tteokbokki (chewy Korean rice cakes). “This is how my family has grown to
