I had never tried Korean food before I started The Hungry Pinner. It was one of those cuisines I always wanted to try, but I somehow never got around to it. My first Korean dish was bulgogi, and I loved it. And I have loved every Korean and Korean fusion recipe I have tried since. Today I’m going to add another Korean dish to my repertoire with Ojingeo Bokkeum (Spicy Stir-fried Squid). It’s been a minute since I’ve made squid, and it’s something I enjoy. Now I’m going to try it Korean style. Let’s see how it goes.
Ojingeo bokkeum is a spicy stir-fried squid dish. If you love squid and spicy food, this flavor packed dish is easy to make with a few staple Korean ingredients.
The Ingredients
This recipe calls for a whole 14-ounce squid, but I can never find them that way. The best I could do was a pound of cleaned squid tubes for $10.99. Not that I needed a whole pound of squid, it was just the minimum order.
Since I had pre-cleaned squid, I had to figure out the amount I needed. The general rule is 2/3 the amount of the whole squid to account for the waste from cleaning. That came to 8.4 ounces, or half a pound (14 X 0.6 = 8.4), about half a pound. I froze the extra.
Most of the remaining ingredients were easy to find at my regular grocery store. They had everything except the gochujang (Korean chili pepper paste) and gochugaru (Korean chili pepper flakes). I had the gochugaru on hand, but I had to order the gochujang paste from Amazon.
The Process
I saved some time and steps by buying cleaned squid. Here’s how it broke down:
- 16 minutes to prep
- 7 minutes to cook
- 21 minutes total
I’m one of those people who likes to prep just enough to get started, then finish up as I cook. But this is a stirfry, and it cooks fast. That meant everything needed to be prepped before I started cooking.
Sometimes prepping before cooking sounds like it will take forever. It really doesn’t! I have found out it can be kind of relaxing to focus on the prep work and not worry about anything else. With that in mind, started a pot of rice on the back burner, then I sliced, chopped, mixed, and marinated my way through steps 1-4.
I was completely ready once it was time to cook. Things did go very quickly, and there was no walking away from the stove once I began. I stirred and fried my way through the rest of the recipe in what seemed like moments.
A wok isn’t in my collections of pans, so I used a 5-quart saute pan. It was big enough to fit all the ingredients and allow me to stirfry them. Plus, the deep sides kept things inside the pan.
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