Customer Reviews

The Korean of the Morning: Classic Recipes from the Land of the Morning Calm

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Okay, since so many have been so critical. I felt that I had to write. This is the largest and most complete Korean cookbook written in English so far. There are other cookbooks, with pictures in English but they usually only cover a few recipes. This one covers a lot. I was quite surprised. When I looked at some of the recipes, I originally thought that it was too simple or that it was lacking. But as many Native Koreans realize there is a lot of minor variations in the ingredients that people use anyway. I tried many of the recipes in the book and found them to be quite good and pretty authentic. In Korean cooking, you have to taste as you go along. This book has a good underlying taste that it is trying to create. Overall, this is a stable cookbook for those Korean Americans who want to have a ready resource to help one get started on learning to cook. (Without asking your mom =) Remember, if you really want it to turn out right, ask someone Korean and whose cooking you like, what ingredients they used and in what proportion since everyone improvises a little or adds things that make it right for their taste, usually adding more sugar, salt, garlic, and or vinegar. Good luck!

I have purchased many Korean cookbooks and tried countless recipes from those books and The Korean Kitchen is one of the few that live up to it's name. The recipes are truly from a Korean kitchen. The recipes are authentic and wondeful. There are many recipes, from every day food to food for special occasions. A great book for someone that already loves Korean food or for someone just learning to love it. It has easy to follow recipes and a great glossary. There is a great variety of Korean recipes in this book, around 140! The author even includes recipes from the island of Cheju, something you don't usually find. The author includes his own experiences that he had while traveling in Korea which add a delightful feeling of having been on his journey with him. The book deserves four and a half stars. The only thing that could have made the book better would have been pictures of the food to show how beautiful it is.

Unlike the western cooking, most cultural recipes aren't exact. You can't say a teaspoon here or a 1/3 cup there. Great food comes from experience and well, one shoots from the hip.

That being said, I must say how much I love this book. I am a Korean myself, ate Korean food most of my life, but never learned how to cook it. Sure, I regret it, but I seem to have a definite flare with western cuisine more than eastern. Or so I told myself.

On my mother's birthday, I decided to try my hand on cooking Korean for the first time. You can say fear was in the eyes of my family and could see them biting their tongue. My husband purchased this book for me a while back, and though I've cracked it open, I've never cooked anything from it. This was my chance and I seized the opportunity. After sitting on the bookshelf for two years, its moment finally came.

I made the bul-go-gie and the chicken casserole (duk-chim). By intuition, I substituted the regular sugar with light brown sugar. (It came out a bit darker but the molasses in the sugar gave it a depth that white sugar would not have given.) Also, a note - it is very important to get the best beef you can from your butcher when making this dish. If you get bad beef, you'll essentially get a bad dish. Anyhow, it came out perfectly and tasty too! The chicken casserole (I cooked it in an oval dutch oven - enamel cast iron from Le Creuset) under low heat and the meat literally fell off the bone and melted in my mouth!!

The final test came when my family ate my creations. Their eyes opened wide and everyone was very impressed that I actually cooked this without help from them! I got wonderful compliments and I knew this book was a total reference guide that shouldn't be shoved in the back of the bookshelf!

It's important to use the best ingredients possible. Having the right equipment is very important too. But the most important thing is to learn to understand which intensity you'd like to enhance and which to tone down as you flavor the foods. No book can teach you what's EXACTLY right in your mouth. Only you can decipher the complexities of that. Use this book as a guide and you'll enjoy a very successful time cooking Korean food.

p.s. My best friend isn't Korean (though I swear her inner child is) and she's been cooking out of this book from cover to cover and has nothing but praises for it!

As a korean/american,I grew up with my mother's korean cooking but never learned to duplicate her dishes. Now that I am older, I regret this very much. I have made many of the dishes in this cookbook and the results hav been delicious. I am kitchen-illiterate and found the instructions easy to follow. I purchased another copy for my older sister, and together we make dishes we were used to having often, and some that only our mother had made on special occasions. I highly recommend this book to beginners as well as culinary chefs.

My mother was Korean and I ate her cooking and that of her friends all my life. I've eaten at a number of different Korean restaurants. No one cooks dishes exactly the same, so don't be surprised if you've eaten Korean food & when you make the recipes in this book, they don't taste exactly like what you've had before. There's an exhaustive supply of tasty, easy-to-follow recipes here; however, one thing you won't get in this book is illustration--there is not one picture or photo in it. If you're a person who likes to know what a dish is supposed to look like when it's cooked, and you're NOT familiar with Korean food, get this book as your backup, not your primer. Note--There is a metric conversion chart in back for those who don't use US measurements. Here's a tip: There are number of sites online that have fantastic recipes and pictures. Do a Google search for "Korean recipes." The pictures you find on some of the sites will give you an idea of what your dish should look like and will leave your mouth watering.

I've only been to a handful of Korean restaurants, but have had some dishes that I thought were incredible and wanted to cook them at home (such as bulgogi and bibimbap). So, I looked for a cookbook that included those dishes and found "The Korean Kitchen." So far, I've cooked 6 recipes from it and they've all been marvelous. My wife and I have a large collection of cookbooks and this one is a classic. The glossary that defines Korean foods and spices is very helpful in preparing to go to a Korean grocery. The only drawback is that there are no pictures.

The book is easy to read, and has a lot of variety, but I question whether or not some of these recipes were tested. It seems to me that I have to add a lot of things (like salt or sugar) to get flavor in many of the recipes. Maybe it is me, but I cannot get the kimchee to turn out correctly. A lot of recipes seem to lack the authentic flavor I grew up with. Maybe my mom was just too good of a cook and I have no chance of making the same foods, recipe book or not.

The recipes are heavily meat-based, unlike most Korean dishes. I suppose if you like meat, that's not a problem, but I find meat in many of the dishes, which takes away from what I would call "authentic" Korean cooking. In general, though, the dishes are pretty tasty, regardless of the reliance on meat. Not a bad cookbook for non-Koreans and a good basic for Korean-Americans.

This is a great book, especially for the beginning Korean cook (me). It's missing a few of what my Korean husband considers the "essentials" but luckily we can rely on his mother for those recipes. Overall this book is great, and I appreciate the anecdotes which accompany the recipes.

This book does cover many Korean recipes, but it misses a few very common Korean foods (like kimpap, etc.). The titles are also only written in romanized Korean, which may not be the end of the world, but is an annoyance and a hassle at times. The book does have good explanations of certain foods, but does not really impress. No pictures, either