Spicy Noodle with Vegetables (Bibim-Guksu)

I love noddle, any kind of noodle. And, today I want to share one of my favorite Korean noodle recipes, "spicy noddle with vegetables". You can, of course, add meat in this noodle, but this noodle is already delicious just with vegetables and egg! And it will be a totally vegetarian noodle dish.

You might have heard "Bibimbap (비빔밥)", a rice bowl topped with various vegetables, meats and egg with spicy Korean chili sauce. The following noodle is very similar, but the main ingredient is thin wheat noodle (somen) instead of rice.

The recipe requires minimal cooking (pan-frying an egg and boiling noodle), and you can easily enjoy it anytime and anywhere. :)

Spicy Noodle with Vegetables ("Bibim-Guksu")
(Yield: 2 servings / Cooking time: 30 minutes)

Ingredients:
+ 140g somen (thin wheat noodle)
+ 2-3 Korean shiso leaves (sesame leaves or perilla)
+ 20g red cabbage
+ 15g carrot
+ 50g cucumber
+ 1/8 sheet of unseasoned dried seaweed - 김(gim) in Korean, 海苔(nori) in Japanese
+ one egg
+ 2 Tbsp gochujang (Korean hot chili paste, 고추장(gochujang) in Korean)
+ 1 Tbsp fine red pepper powder
+ 2½ tsp sugar
+ 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
+ 1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
+ (optional) 1/4 tsp sesame seeds



Procedures:
1. First, mix well gochujang, fine red pepper powder, sugar, rice vinegar and low-sodium soy sauce together.


2. Crack an egg and stir well until egg white and yolk are mixed. Heat a pan (ideally rectangular pan) over medium to low heat, and grease the inside with a bit of vegetable oil. Pour the stirred egg and cook both sides to make a thin pan-fried egg sheet. Cool the pan-fried egg completely before slicing.


3. Slice all the ingredients - shiso leaves, red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, dried seaweed, and pan-fried egg - into thin strips (thinner than julienne). Please use kitchen shears, instead of knife, to slice dried seaweed thinly.


4. Boil a pot of water, then cook somen (thin wheat noodle) for 4-5 minutes over medium heat just until the noodle is cooked. Drain the noodle with a strainer, and wash it with cold running water until it is completely cooled.


5. Mix noodle with the spicy sauce from #1. (Leave 1 tsp of hot sauce for plating.) Then, divide the seasoned noodle into two bowls


6. Top the seasoned noodle with thinly sliced vegetables and egg from #3. In the center, spoon a half teaspoon of spicy sauce which we kept in step #5, and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.


Enjoy~