Korean Cuisine Bento Box

Today’s featured bento box is filled with Korean dishes: chapchae, bindae duk (Korean pancake), spicy sweet chicken and steamed sweet potato.  The chapchae recipe can be found in this post and the spicy sweet chicken recipe hasn’t been written down yet.  Hang in there you ominvores, I know I promised some meat recipes and they are coming soon!  

I usually purchase the Korean pancakes at the deli, but since we are enjoying a long weekend I had time to cook a few myself.  These Korean pancakes or bindae duk are different from the other type of Korean  pancake, pajeon.  Bindae duk  is not made with flour but with  mung beans that have been soaked then pureed into a batter.   However, I must admit that  even though with extra days off, I didn’t make the batter from scratch, I bought a packaged “just add water” mix.  It tastes just as good so why not?    I added thinly sliced white onions  and julienned red bell peppers tinto the batter but you can use sliced green onions, zuchini, shiso leaf, etc.  Just think very thin  pieces and you can’t go wrong.  Chopped kimchi works good too. 

 The remaining section contains baked purple sweet potato.  This one I cooked myself  in a toaster oven!  Easy.  Depending on their size, cut into half  or quartered place the potatoes with skins in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 30 – 45 minutes.  I enjoy using the smaller appliance instead of the heating up the large oven.  It saves energy, especially if cooking only one or 2 potatoes and doesn’ t make the kitchen hot.

A close up of the bindae duk in the above photo.

Below, a bento with  kimbap, which resembles maki sushi, but tastes very different with it’s sesame oil, spinach, carrot, egg and pickled radish.

There are many excellent Korean favorites that can be easitly placed  into a bento box.  Keeping in mind the basic principles of packing a bento for safety, you can include kimbap-similar to maki sushi, kalbi jim-braised short ribs, and fried mandu-Korean dumplings.  What are your favorite Korean dishes?  Have you ever  tried adding it to your bento?

By the way, if you like the look of this style of box, I am giving one away in a contest.