[Cook] Budae-jjigae （부대찌개）韓式部隊鍋

This "Budae-Jjigae" (Budae = troop, jjigae= stew) came from South Korea after the Korean War. Because food was scarce back then, people dwelling around the US army bases made this kind of hot pot with the use of surplus food including processed meat products (Spam, sausage), kimchi, and baked beans. Now this has become a popular dish in the Korean restaurant and because of the influence from Korean TV shows in Taiwan, we started to know and like this.

This week comes the Lunar New Year. Some friends came up with the idea to have Budae-Jjigae for the dinner on the Chinese New Year's day (大年初一) at home. Thus we asked a Korean friend how to make it authentic and got the following ingredient from her instructions:

All the ingredient were bought from H- mart (A Korean supermarket in the East Coast USA). For the sauce we need these soup stock and hot paste.

Kimchi. We followed the instruction from our friend and bought this brand. Although a little bit pricey than other brands, it indeed tastes better.

Put some oil, add sliced onion, green onion, and minced garlic (about 4-6 cloves), stirred until they became fragrant.

  

Then we can add Kimchi and made a little stirring, followed by adding the soup stock and all the other sauce ingredient (paste, spicy powder from 辛instant noodle, 3 tsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of sugar, 1/2 cup of rice wine)  

This hot paste looks yummy. 

The soup base is made. Now we can put in any stew ingredient.

It is well-known that the nutrient value of Budae-Jjigae is very poor...  we don't like Spam, hot dogs... those kind of things, so we only get 辛Shin instant noodles, rice cakes, fresh vegetables, and tofu. 

There are also golden muschrooms, fish balls, and sliced beef

We can also add cheese on top of this.

It tasted so good and is easy to make.  

This hot pot gathering made it a Very special New Year's Day in 2018. Thank you gals!