Food

Panchan: Asian Pear and Watermelon Kimchis

Roy Choi

Lesson time 09:06 min

Roy explains that “kimchi” is a verb and shows you how to kimchi unexpected ingredients, like fruit.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Asian Pear Kimchi • Watermelon Kimchi

Preview

ANNOUNCER: Warning, this class contains some bad language. ROY CHOI: The beginning of a Korean meal traditionally starts with something called panchan, flavorful little bites of food that whet your palate and give the chef a chance to flex. There's almost always one panchan on the table, kimchi. Earlier in this course, we made kimchi paste, and I showed you how to kimchi napa cabbage. Now I'm going to show you how you can kimchi almost anything in the world starting with Asian pear and watermelon. You don't really make, like, this amount of kimchi at a time. You know, it's kind of like one of those things where you make a lot. So you have a lot of leftover. You got some leftover paste. You've already filled two containers of napa cabbage kimchi. You're like I don't want to make any more napa cabbage kimchi. Then you're like, OK, wait a second. Roy told me that kimchi is not the cabbage. It's the process, so then all of a sudden that opens up your mind. You have all of this, and who doesn't have fruits and vegetables and cucumbers and zucchinis and lettuces in your refrigerator that you just haven't had a chance to get to? The beautiful thing about this paste is you don't have to throw anything away because you can just turn all that day away kind of fruit and vegetable into kimchi. So we're going to do an Asian pear kimchi and a watermelon kimchi. The thing about these two is that I know Asian pear may be something you may not be able to get everywhere but just consider this an apple. Think of this as a pear, radish, even oranges, peaches. It's summertime. Nectarines, apricots, whatever the case may be. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm gonna show you a quick way-- you can use a peeler, of course, right. Can use a peeler. But if you don't have a peeler, you can also use your knife. Hold it here. You want to kind of go around, and you want to keep this a little bit at an angle, OK, a little bit of an angle because you don't want to go into the flesh. Very much like filling a fish, for example. You don't want to hit the flesh. You just want to take off the skin. So kind of come around like this. You can try to keep it all in one strand. OK. Practice. Practice is the trick to this but also the angle and also just following the contour of the fruit itself. And, again, you don't have to be perfect. You can take these little blemishes here that you didn't get to. Normally, I'd be able to do this in one shot, but I'm a little nervous right now with y'all watching and shit like that. I get like a little nervous so, but if I was in my kitchen at 2:00 in the afternoon just doing prep, like, this shit would be all one ribbon. I'll try to do that, get over my nerves. This could be something you learn in culinary school, something you learn in a kitchen, but it's also something that you see maybe your aunties or grandma do as well because, again, not everyone had peelers. We're going to make thes...

About the Instructor

Roy Choi wasn’t trying to start a revolution when he took tacos, kimchi, and more to the Los Angeles streets with the Kogi BBQ taco truck. He just wanted to make what he loved and knew by heart: immigrant-influenced all-American food. Now he’s teaching you his recipes, sauces, and techniques. Learn how to cook with your instincts using equipment you already have—and start adding your own twist to tried-and-true favorites.

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Roy Choi

Food truck “godfather” Roy Choi teaches you his signature recipes and mother sauces—then empowers you to make them your own.

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