How to make kimbap?

1. Get ingredients ready: Kimbap is usually considered as fast food or a snack, but it can take an
hour or more, especially for a beginner, to have all ingredients ready. But once you get used to it,
it will be easier and faster as in other cookings.
(1) Start to cook rice. It takes 30 to 50 minutes depending on what kind of rice you cook or what
kind of method you use.
(2) Crack 3 or 4 eggs into a bowl. Add salt and mix it well. Pan-fry and cut it lengthwise with a
little over a quarter inch width.
(3) Boil 4 or 5 cups of water to cook spinach. When water boils, boil spinach less than 10 seconds.
If it’s too long, all good vitamins of spinach could be lost and its color changes. Rinse spinach
with cold water and squeeze all the water out. Add sesame oil, salt and some sesame seeds if you
have.
(4) Slice carrots in 2 inch length and stir-fry. Add some salt.
(5) If you have danmuji, cut it lengthwise in a quarter inch width. If you have cucumber, peel it
and cut in lengthwise about a little less than a half inch. Add some salt and leave it for about 10
minutes. Rinse it with water and squeeze the water out.
(6) If you have Korean fish cake or crab meat, cut it lengthwise about a quarter inch width. Fish
cake and crab meat from grocery stores are not the healthiest food, but if we have it once it a
while, it should be okay.
(7) Beef: Especially when you have SPAM, fish cake or crab meat, you can easily pass this. If you
want to add beef, slice it into small pieces and stir-fry with some seasonings.
(8) Finally rice again: When the rice is fully cook, add some salt, sesame oil, sesame seeds and
mix them well.

2. Let’s roll!
If you have a bamboo mat, rolling will be so much easier. It’s about $1 or $2 from many Korean
groceries, but I’m pretty sure it’s easy to buy from other stores, too.
Place a sheet of kim (dry seaweed) on the bamboo mat. Put about a cup of rice on the center of
the seaweed and using a spoon, spread it evenly over the 2/3 or less of the seaweed from the
bottom.
Place a little bit of each ingredient on a single line and start to roll it up. Roll it slowly and gently.
Every time you roll, pause and squeeze the roll a little bit to tighten the ingredients together.
At the end, place some rice at the end edge of the seaweed to seal the roll, if necessary - sticky
rice is a good glue.

3. Cutting
Remove the bamboo mat and slice up the gimbap roll. Every so often, wipe your knife with some
sesame oil. Otherwise, the knife will be too sticky because of small rice pieces taken while cutting
kimbap.
In Korea, it’s a tradition that kids bring kimbap for seasonal excursions or special events. When I
was an elementary school student, an excursion was a special fun thing because it only happened
a couple of times a year. On top of that, it was so exciting to see mom busy cooking special dishes
including kimbap. I especially liked kimbap because it was very colorful and looked very difficult
to make.
I make my first kimbap only a few weeks ago. It didn’t taste magical as my mom’s was at
excursions. But it was still healthy and tasteful, and it definitely soothed my longing for Korea.
I was busy making and eating gimbap, and I forgot to take a photo of nice-looking gimbap slices.
These are the ones that are left. =)