In search of Korean recipes under ~500kcal!

mortuseon_

I have a real soft spot for Korean food...bulgogi, kimchi jjigae, paejon, japchae...you name it, I love it! Since a lot of my favourite restaurants don't have calories on the menus, though, I was hoping to make some Korean food at home. Does anyone have any low-ish calorie recipes to share? No worries if they're a bit over 500kcal, that's just an arbitrary goal. Thanks in advance!

Kelkat405

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/100606/beef-bulgogi/

rheddmobile

Most Korean food is reasonable in calories if you limit the portions of your starchy foods such as rice or noodles. Making good Korean food at home can be tricky unless you're set up for it - you really need the correct ingredients, plus prepping and fermenting a half dozen banchan is a lot of trouble! If it were me, I'd go to the restaurants, look up the closest thing on the database and call it good. If you underestimate by half, it's not going to hurt much since it's not calorie dense food.

When I do want to cook something Korean at home what I do is go to the grocery next to my favorite restaurant and throw myself on their mercy. I ask which brand of what they use themselves and how to make things. I also have a cookbook which was made for second generation kids to learn traditional cooking alongside their parents - it has both Korean and English text plus pictures. I'll see if I can find it and let you know the title.

azkabanned

The easiest to prep is bibimbap. Also the most nutritious I can think of.

Quick and skinny version —when I plan to have bibimbap one week, I just keep boxes of each prepped ingredient in the fridge, and just assemble in a bowl.

White calrose rice
95% Ground beef - marinate with mirin and soy and tad bit of sugar, then stir fry (or you can use store bought bulgogi marinade but those contain more sugar calories)
Carrots - julienne these, I like mine raw
Cucumber - julienne these, I also like mine raw
Spinach - I like mine raw but my mom would blanch, then mix with sesame oil and soy
Bean sprouts ( I sometimes skip the bean sprouts)- blanch, then mix with sesame oil and salt
1egg - sunny side up
1tbsp Gochujang + 1tsp sesame oil + 15ml soy sauce + 1tsp honey - this is your sauce

Assemble to look like the pic, the pic is not mine lol but it’s hard to mess it up.

When counting calories, I skip all the sesame oil and sugar except for the honey in the sauce. Also no oil when cooking ground beef.

You can play with how much rice calories you want to eat vs. vegetable calories depending on your calorie allowance, which is my favourite part of bibimbap. With 0.5 cups of rice, 4 ounces of ground beef, half a cucumber, a whole medium carrot, and a cup of spinach, mine ends up being less than 400 calories.

A better dolsot bibimbap involves a stone pot, more oil and toppings, and fatty slices of bibimbap, but we’re trying to lose weight here aren’t we haha.

azkabanned

Sundubu jjigae can also be very low in calories if you load the stew up with veg and kimchi and use a low calorie stock. This I don’t have a recipe for because I might add more veg BUT the staple ingredients are:

Beef/chicken/seafood stock
Soft tofu
Kimchi
Beansprouts
Gochujang
Red chilli powder
Sesame oil (I skip this because calories)
Beef (fatty sliced beef is always the best tasting but calories ... I also sub with 95% lean ground beef)
Scallions

I basically throw these in a pot and season with salt to taste at the end. Taste as you add the red chilli powder and Gochujang bit by bit, I like to LOAD UP on spice.

mortuseon_

meowthhh wrote: »

Sundubu jjigae can also be very low in calories if you load the stew up with veg and kimchi and use a low calorie stock. This I don’t have a recipe for because I might add more veg BUT the staple ingredients are:

Beef/chicken/seafood stock
Soft tofu
Kimchi
Beansprouts
Gochujang
Red chilli powder
Sesame oil (I skip this because calories)
Beef (fatty sliced beef is always the best tasting but calories ... I also sub with 95% lean ground beef)
Scallions

I basically throw these in a pot and season with salt to taste at the end. Taste as you add the red chilli powder and Gochujang bit by bit, I like to LOAD UP on spice.

Thank you for these! I loooove sundubu jjigae, so this looks fantastic. Looks like the ingredients will be easy enough to source, too. Thanks again

mortuseon_

rheddmobile wrote: »

Most Korean food is reasonable in calories if you limit the portions of your starchy foods such as rice or noodles. Making good Korean food at home can be tricky unless you're set up for it - you really need the correct ingredients, plus prepping and fermenting a half dozen banchan is a lot of trouble! If it were me, I'd go to the restaurants, look up the closest thing on the database and call it good. If you underestimate by half, it's not going to hurt much since it's not calorie dense food.

When I do want to cook something Korean at home what I do is go to the grocery next to my favorite restaurant and throw myself on their mercy. I ask which brand of what they use themselves and how to make things. I also have a cookbook which was made for second generation kids to learn traditional cooking alongside their parents - it has both Korean and English text plus pictures. I'll see if I can find it and let you know the title.

That would be fantastic, thanks! I'm mostly nervous because I'm at 1200-1500kcal per day (net), which doesn't leave much margin for error. I've been experimenting with eating at 1200 throughout the week to leave an extra 300 surplus per day for the weekend, though - maybe that would work. I appreciate the response, looking forward to seeing the cookbook if you can find it

Sunna_W

We make noodle soup a lot (in the winter about twice a month) and here is the recipe I use:

1 lb. boneless beef short ribs cut against the grain in thin pieces.
8 oz. choy sum, bak choy, nappa cabbage, or kale
4 oz. carrots sliced
4 oz. celery sliced
1 large white onion sliced
1 large orange bell pepper
2 TBSP minced garlic (or more)
2 TBSP chopped ginger (or more)
1 chili pepper sliced (pick whatever one you like the best)
32 oz beef stock (I use store brand organic)

Put all in ingredients into a pressure cooker and cook on medium pressure for about 30 minutes.

Serves 4 at 439 calories.

I cook 80 g. of dangmyeon noodles (70 calories) per serving and cut them into pieces with scissors and stir them into the soup and let them set for about 30 minutes.

The noodles swell but don't get sticky and they seem to satisfy my noodle fix.

Total per serving 509 calories

mortuseon_

Thanks all! I went to the Asian grocery store today and got some kimchi, some gochujang, and some very very thin slices of fatty beef (easier than making it myself, at least). Can't wait to give some of these recipes a try! I must look out for those dangmyeon noodles, too, I don't think I've ever seen them before in the shops.

azkabanned

Fatty cuts of beef

I’m on 1200cal and can not stop at 200 cal worth of fatty beef so I sub with extra lean ground beef because 200cal of that is more than enough. Ughhhhh I want fatty beef so bad.

azkabanned

Sunna_W wrote: »

I cook 80 g. of dangmyeon noodles (70 calories) per serving and cut them into pieces with scissors and stir them into the soup and let them set for about 30 minutes.

The noodles swell but don't get sticky and they seem to satisfy my noodle fix.

Omg. So I did some research on the calories of dangmyeon a while back and they’re actually quite high in calories. I buy a Chinese brand of mung bean noodles that say on the package 220cal for 300g. But it seemed way lower than other cellophane products in the same section so people said they’re mislabeled.
Cellophane is over 300 calories for 100g says most sources.

Or on the low end of my search: “A 50-gram serving of sweet potato noodles only has 170 calories per serving, no fat and no protein.”

I don’t think dangmyeon is as low calorie as it is sometimes labeled