Korean cooking 101 - Seaweed Salad

A relatively recent question by a fellow blogger has coincided with a thought I had: I should really explain some of the Korean cooking mayhem I get up to in my wee kitchen. Korean cooking is very fun and exciting due to the variety of crazy ingredients available as well as new techniques to be experimented with. Some recipes I find online in an English version, other times it's guesswork, or occasionally I dip into my (written aaaall in Korean) Korean cookbook.

Today's recipe was mainly guesswork. Sometimes basic dishes are easy to figure out once you have a grasp of basic seasonings.

Seaweed Salad (미역 무침)

Miyeok is a kind of brown seaweed; it's most famous dish is miyeok soup which is traditionally consumed by women for up to a month after childbirth, and by everyone on birthdays.

Fresh from the grocery store.

Miyeok comes in two basic forms, dried or fresh. Dried is convenient as you simply have to soak it in some water and it'll spring back to life. Caution: a little expands a LOT. Or, you can buy it fresh at the market or grocery store. It's really cheap - you can get a huge mass for about a buck. If you buy it fresh, soak it in water for a while. This makes it less salty and slimy. Whether using dried or fresh, after its soak it should be drained thoroughly before proceeding. Once it's well drained, simply cut it up into manageable chunks. Scissors work best for this.

ONE piece after it's been soaked. You can see the need for cutting - who could fit that tentacley thing in one's mouth...?

Now for the seasonings: salt, vinegar (rice or apple - something mild), minced garlic, sesame oil, sesame seeds. Just mess around with the proportions till it tastes nice. I'm guessing for a couple of handfuls of miyeok, you'd want around a teaspoon of sesame oil, about that amount of vinegar depending on how tangy you like it, not much garlic (maybe a small clove), 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of seasame seeds. Salt to taste. Mix it all up and enjoy~~