Japchae – Korean noodles

Japchae – Korean noodles ingredients
Just a note on a few of the vegetables:

Shiitake mushrooms – These are Asian mushrooms with a more intense mushroomy flavour than standard white mushrooms, brown/cremini mushrooms etc. However, if you can’t find them or they are a bit pricey, feel free to use ordinary mushrooms. They are, as you’d expect, better value in Asian stores.

Baby spinach – Substitute with chopped English spinach, the leafy part of Asian greens or even kale. *She ducks as Koreans start throwing rotten tomatoes at her*

How to make Japchae (semi-traditional way)
Traditional Japchae recipes call for each vegetable to be cooked individually to factor in the different cook times and preserve the flavour of each. Yes, it’s cumbersome (you count 6 vegetables above!).

But if you jumble them all up into one giant stir fry then the flavours do tend to bleed into each other a bit. So I’ve compromised and cooked the vegetables in 2 lots, bundling vegetables together by factoring in cook times and flavour “bleeding” to best replicate the same result where vegetables are cooked individually. Bonus: We use less oil.

I hope my slight short-cut method doesn’t offend Korean nationals! 😇

Cutting beef short ribs
As noted above, I really think the best beef for Japchae is beef short ribs – juiciest, best flavour. It’s typically sold on the bone (off the bone is not common here in Australia), so here is how to slice the meat.

If you are using a boneless steak instead, or boneless beef short ribs, then you obviously don’t need to cut the meat off the bone!

Beef ribs – Not gonna lie. My step photo templates use even number of photos and I only had 5. So I stuck this in as a filler. “Beef short ribs. Ta da!”

Trim excess fat – Beef ribs tend to have quite a generous layer of fat on them. So slice off the thick layers on the surface. Not all of it though! The fat is what keeps it juicy!

Cut the meat off the bone simply by holding the beef rib upright then slicing the knife down against the bone. It’s easy – the bone is straight and flat.

Cut in half horizontally to form 2 thin steaks so we can cut thin beef strips.

Cut strips – Keep the halves stacked. Then cut into thin 0.5cm/ 1/5″ slices.

Voila! Tasty beef strips. You are going to love how juicy these are!

Cooking Japchae
Making Japchae – Korean noodles
Marinate beef ~20 minutes – Place the beef with the marinade ingredients into a bowl and toss to combine. Then just set aside while you prepare and cook everything else, so it ends up marinating for around 20 minutes. It doesn’t need to be marinated for long because the beef strips are so thin, though it wouldn’t hurt to leave overnight.

Mix the sauce ingredients in a very big bowl. We are going to be tossing the whole batch of Japchae in this bowl so I really mean it when I say make it a big one!

Cook the Japchae noodles per packet directions. Mine says 8 minutes in boiling water.
Noodles on sauce – Drain, rinse briefly under tap water, shake off excess water well then place in the bowl with the sauce. Do not mix – just leave it there.

Making Japchae – Korean noodles
Vegetables Batch 1 – Cook the onion, mushrooms and white part of green onions first, until the mushrooms just start to soft. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.

Vegetables batch 2 – Next, cook the carrot and capsicum/bell pepper first, until they are just cooked but still have a soft bite to them. ie “tender crisp”. Soggy floppy overcooked vegetables is unacceptable! 😂 Then add the spinach and the green part of the green onions and toss for a minute just until the spinach is wilted. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.

Cook beef – Lastly, cook the beef! Cook it on high heat just until you no longer see red – with a strong stove and good pan it should be barely 90 seconds. Hopefully in this time you’ll get a bit of browning in some patches too. Then add it into the bowl.

Toss! Add the sesame seeds, and now it’s time to toss! You used a giant bowl right, like I said to right at the start?? If you didn’t, you’ll start to cry (or swear) right about now.

Toss, toss, toss, until the sauce is evenly distributed. Check by looking at the colour of the noodles – the sauce stains the glassy noodles a brown colour.

Then tumble it all into a bowl, finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and serve!

Picking up Japchae – Korean noodles
YUM. That sauce is everything! I really like that it’s not as sweet as the Japchae sauce you get at some Korean restaurants which I find a little too sweet.

This is a big batch recipe so it’s an excellent one for taking leftovers to work. It will keep for 3 days in the fridge. Just lightly warm it – or serve hot if you want. Though honestly, it’s also very good at room temperature too!