Tuna Doenjang Deopbap

Even the name is quite hard to pronounce; it’s delicious and easy to make.

Image from Author. Please don’t mind my reflection on the spoon.

Hello again!

It’s been a while since I wrote my last articles about food recipes. Here I am, making my comeback in the cooking world.

How many of us have ever watch Korean drama? I was a self-proclaimed Korean Drama maniac. I said “was” because I don’t want to spend too much time binge-watching Korean Drama. Compared to last year, I’ve cut the time I spend to watch Korean Drama from “more than 14 hours a week” to “1 or 2 hours a week — or even 2 weeks.”

When you watch Korean Drama, you will not only enjoy the story; you will also get to know about Korean culture and Korean food. From the film industry, they also introduce other industries in Korea to the world. Let’s say I’ve watched more than 50 Korean drama; I can hardly say which Korean drama that didn’t have Korean food eating scenes — almost 0.

When you watch Korean Drama, sometimes it makes you crave to eat ramyeon (Korean ramen, or instant noodle), tteokbokki, jjampong, jjajangmyeon, or kimbab! I’ve been there countless times. Haha!

I stumbled on a video on YouTube last month, it was a Korean TV show called Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant. It’s a good TV show. I enjoyed watching it. And I want to share with you one of the recipes from Oh Yoon Ah. She didn’t say that the name of this dish is Tuna Doenjang Deopbap; I’m the one who named it that based on the ingredients.

Shall we?

You need:

• 1 canned tuna in vegetable oil (there are dozens of canned tuna, but just stick with tuna in vegetable oil for this recipe, please)
• Watercress (you can change it to other crunchy veggies)
• Mushroom, chop it. (Any mushroom is fine, as long as it’s edible. I use portabella mushroom)
• 2 tbsp of doenjang paste (it’s Korean soybean paste. I tried to find a substitute for doenjang paste, most of them say you can change it with miso paste. But I don’t think it will taste the same. Of course, duh.)
• 1 tbsp of gochujang
• Onion, chop it. (you can use 1 onion, or you can use half of it. It depends on you!)
• 1 clove garlic, chop it.
• Oil (or you can use the vegetable oil from the canned tuna. It’s just to saute the onion and garlic)
• Rice.
• Water. But just a bit — for real.

How to make it:

• Saute the onion first. You can saute the garlic first, but I choose to saute the onion first to avoid the taste of burnt garlic.
• Throw mushroom into the pan. Saute it for 1 or 2 minutes.
• Throw the tuna into the pan.
• Doenjang and gochujang in. Don’t forget to add some water, but not too much unless you want them to be a stew.
• Taste it. If you think it’s too plain, add a pinch of salt. But I didn’t use salt since doenjang paste is already salty.
• Place your tuna doenjang on the top of your rice, and don’t forget to add watercress.

Image from the author.

That’s all. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!