spinach gye-ran rice
hi friends!
as you’re probably wrapping up work and getting ready to put up that palm tree emoji up on slack, i wanted to say hi with a recipe :)
i’ve recently been in a kick to add more vegetables into my diet, so here we are with spinach rice! i already had parents on instagram message me for this recipe because i totally get it, you want your kids to have their vegetables too. with this spinach rice, we are definitely are not reinventing the wheel because koreans have been doing it for ages with everything under the sun like mushrooms, radishes, beans, roots, herbs, kimchi, sprouts, seaweed, seafood, meat. the sky is really the limit on variations of steamed rice…i just happened to have a bag of spinach (as we often do) that was on the cusp of wilting.
other than that sidebar, this recipe is ~suuups special~ to me because this is like a life-journey food. it’s come along with me in every stage of my life from childhood, living away from home for the first time in college, in adulthood, and now in my home with merman. our first memories of gye-ran bap are typically characterized as “a dish that mom made when she was having a lazy day”, but i remember it as a dish my mom told me to fix for myself whenever i got hungry between the time school ended and dinner time. i think that in there somewhere, she was teaching me to be an independent boss and fend for myself. which i totally respect.
there was never a day when we didn’t have rice in the rice cooker, eggs in the fridge, and soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds in the pantry. the first time my mom made it for me though, i thought my mom was crazy because she literally cracked a raw egg on top of the rice and told me that it was ready after all the times i was warned that the raw eggs in raw cookie dough would end with a stomach ache.
on that day, kathy (my mom) went rogue, but i realized that although raw egg whites looked like snot, it ok to eat and it’s actually delicious.
my earliest memories of gyeran bap have evolved and taken different shapes through the years. like in college, when i recklessly spent through my budget and my allowance ran low at the end of the month. gyeran bap was the true homie. actually, to be honest, sometimes, we even ran out of white rice so i’d have variations of microwaved oatmeal throughout the day. example: oatmeal topped with a fried egg and soy sauce. i’d run off to class with a happy and warm belly though.
now, in adulthood with merman, luckily, it’s not the money anymore. we turn to gye-ran bap when we’re in a bind for energy and time and we’re tired of delivered food. i know, first world problems. he’s a happy camper because it’s emotionally resonated with him through the many and long years of when he was a poooooor and busy grad student in korea. it was either gyre-ran bap or triangle kimbap from 7-11 that he remembers.
case in point, we all love gye-ran bap and i think that in this point in my life now, it’s allowed to evolve and go under a personal rebrand. we can keep it simple and nostalgic, but switch up the ways we prepare the building blocks. ideas are using a broth or stock with the rice, and throw in some vegetables in the fridge that are about to go bad. use a perfectly sous-vide poached egg because why not? and then treat it all with high quality soy sauce and sesame oil!!!! **chefs kiss and exploding brain emoji**
if you’re a parent though, i don’t know though. but i’m happy to talk about this with you…when you’re introducing gye-ran bap to your nugget for the first time, wouldn’t it be fun to introduce them to it in the way that you learned of it? i’m definitely going to do the whole snotty raw egg yolk thing for sure ;)
anyways, hope you all have a restful, safe, and healthy holiday week!
<3 christine
Spinach gye-ran rice
4 servings
ingredients
spinach rice
2 cups short grain white rice
4 handful bunches of spinach
4-5 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tsp salt
2 cups chicken stock (optional) or water
gye-ran bap
4 eggs
soy sauce (to taste)
sesame oil (to taste)
toasted sesame seeds (to taste)
notes
rice prep
in medium sized bowl, rinse rice in water until the water is no longer cloudy.
add lukewarm water to around 1 inch above the rice line in the bowl. soak rice for 30 minutes.
spinach and garlic prep
bring 4 cups of water up to a boil in a pot.
stir in vinegar and salt, then submerge the spinach in water. remove spinach from heat as soon as the water comes back up to a boil (no more than 5-10 seconds).
rinse spinach under cold water. gather the leaves and squeeze as much water out.
finely chop the spinach leaves and mince garlic.
poached egg prep (optional)
i typically poach eggs using a fail-safe method with merman’s sous vide. sous-vide eggs at 145F. remove eggs from sous-vide bath after 1 hour.
you can totally skip this step and use your favorite way to cook eggs - just as long as the yolk is somewhat runny. soft boiled, sunny side up, or over-easy is fine too.
cooking the rice
with a rice cooker: drain soaked rice, add to rice cooker pot, sprinkle spinach and garlic on top of rice, pour in 2 cups of chicken broth or water. steam rice as you typically would with regular rice.
with a pot:
add rice to pot with 2 cups of chicken broth
cover the pot. once the water reaches a boil on medium-high heat, lower the heat to medium heat (simmer) and cook for 10 minutes.
bring heat down to low, and gently fluff the rice, being sure to lift some of the rice that has stuck to the bottom and sides of the pot.
flatten the top of the rice, then sprinkle the spinach and garlic on top. if you’ve noticed that all of the broth or water has evaporated, pour in an additional 1/4 cup.
cover and steam for an additional 15 minutes.
test a grain of rice to see if the texture is to your liking. if it’s a bit too al dente, cook for an additional 5 minutes.
let the rice rest for 10 minutes, then fluff using a wooden spoon.
gye-ran rice
spoon a serving size of rice into a serving bowl
crack a poached egg above the rice (or however way you cooked your eggs)
drizzle about 1.5 tsp of good soy sauce and 1 tsp of sesame oil. this is just a guide so feel free to adjust to your liking :)
sprinkle in some nutty toasted sesame seeds
