After the holidays there’s always Spam and canned tuna left over from gift sets. And there’s aged kimchi in the fridge.
When you can’t face going out for groceries but something has to go on the stove, these three are enough.
Not a single vegetable goes in. No scallion, no onion.
It follows Cho Mi-ryung’s recipe, and the key is serving it with a rolled omelette made deliberately bland.

At a glance

Ingredients

  • aged kimchi ¼ head + tuna 1 can + Spam half a tin
  • seasoning (sugar1, fish sauce1)
  • optional (an unseasoned rolled omelette)

Prep

  • Cut the aged kimchi a bit small.
  • Drain the oil off the tuna.
  • Crush the Spam with the side of the knife, then chop it roughly.

Cooking

  • Everything in the pot with water and the seasoning, high heat.
  • Once it boils, medium-low for 5 minutes or more.
  • Make a bland rolled omelette, nothing fancy, and eat them together — it’s good!

Ingredients (serves 4)

Main

  • aged kimchi ¼ head
  • tuna one 100 g (3.5 oz) can
  • Spam half of a 200 g (7 oz) tin

Broth

  • water 400 ml (1⅔ cups)

Seasoning — numbers are tablespoons (1 tbsp = 15 ml)

  • sugar 1, aekjeot 1

On the side

  • a rolled omelette, unsalted

Mugeunji is kimchi aged for months — sour, soft, and deep. Korean groceries sell it labeled as such; otherwise use the sourest kimchi you can find.
Aekjeot is Korean fish sauce (anchovy or sand lance). Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce substitutes directly.
Jjageuri means a stew boiled down thick, with much less broth than a jjigae — closer to a sauce for rice.

Prep

  • Cut the aged kimchi a bit small, about the size you’d use for janchi-guksu. Don’t rinse it, and don’t shake out the filling.
  • Only pull off the parts where the filling is packed on especially thick.
  • Drain the oil off the tuna.
  • Chop the Spam roughly, then press down on it with the flat of the knife to crush it.

Cooking

  • Put the prepped ingredients, 400 ml of water, and the seasoning into a pot and bring to a boil over high heat.
  • Once it boils, drop to medium and simmer 5 minutes or more. It’s edible from this point on.
  • Ten minutes on medium tastes better still.
  • Fry the rolled omelette without salt, keeping it casual, and serve alongside.

Notes

Crush the Spam before you chop it

Press down with the flat of the knife to crush it, then chop it roughly.
Neat cubes look better, but crushed Spam cooks faster and gives its flavor up to the broth sooner.
This is a dish that’s done in ten minutes, so that’s the right trade.

Pour off the oil from the tuna can

Take the flesh, leave the oil.
The tuna and the Spam already bring plenty of fat. There’s no room for the can oil on top of that.

Sugar 1 and fish sauce 1 is the whole seasoning

In a kimchi jjigae you’d be reaching for gochugaru and doenjang too. Here there are only two things.
The aged kimchi and the Spam are so strongly seasoned already that nothing else fits.
If it tastes flat, add a little more then — that’s the safe order.

The rolled omelette has to be bland

No salt goes into the omelette on the side.
The jjageuri is strongly seasoned, and if the omelette is seasoned too, the whole table turns salty.
Bland omelette and salty jjageuri, eaten in the same mouthful — that’s why they go together.

If rolled omelettes give you trouble

Beat 2–3 eggs smooth ahead of time.
Put about a tablespoon of oil in the pan, heat it over medium-high, and just pour the egg in.
When the bottom and the edges start to set, stir slowly with a spatula or a silicone scraper.
As the cooked parts gather together, roll them into a round — that’s the omelette. Keep stirring slowly instead and you get something between an omelette and scrambled eggs.

For another dish to eat with rice, there’s Spicy Myeolchi-bokkeum.