We don’t often purchase kimchi, but every now and then, we get a craving for that wonderful Korean spicy pickled cabbage. This meal involves one of my favourite techniques of late, and it can be applied to chicken and beef as well as pork, so I encourage you to experiment with proteins. Anyway, I am referring to flattening meat and stuffing it via rolling. Depending on how you do it, what your filling is, and your surface area:thickness ratio after you flatten the meat, this can also give your dish a “pinwheel” effect that makes the dish look much more difficult (think: wooing effect on your guests) to make than it really was. In tonight’s dinner, I’m stuffing a boneless pork loin chop with spicy kimchi.
I suggest pairing this with noodles, sauteed vegetables, or dumplings of some sort. This time, I went with sauteed snow peas and mushrooms and kimchi edamame dumplings.
Time: 20 minutes prep, 15-20 minutes cook
Ingredients:
- Boneless Pork Loin Chops (1 per person is a good rule of thumb)
- Kimchi (go for the fresh refrigerated kimchi…it’s worth it)
- 1 Gallon zip top bag
Method:
- Place one piece of pork into the gallon bag on a cutting board, and close all but about an inch of the bag. This will prevent any splatter while also letting air out, thus avoiding popping a giant pork filled balloon, which would be a disaster.
- Starting in the middle of the pork, flatten the meat with an outward ending motion.
- Once your pork is at your desired size and thickness, do the same with all of the rest of the meat.
- Place as much kimchi as you like on top of each piece of meat
- Roll!
- Either cook right away, or wrap in saran wrap and put in the fridge until you’re ready to cook
- The cooking method is also up to you. I like to get a good sear on my meat and then finish it in the oven, so I’m going to share that, but you could also just put on a baking pan and throw it in the oven, on the grill, or under the broiler until you’ve got an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees F.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F, and on the stovetop, heat a large cast iron pan, and put oil in to coat the bottom.
- Once the oil is hot, place the meat in the pan, and turn it upside down after a few minutes.
- Once both sides are browned, put the pan in the oven, and let it cook for 10-12 minutes until you’ve achieved a safe internal temperature.
- Remove from oven, let sit on a cutting board for 5 minutes before cutting.
- Cut however you like, move to a plate, and enjoy!
