Japchae is a Korean dish that uses noodles made from sweet potato starch. I love the flavor and texture so much that I eat it at AYCE Korean BBQ, even though I should be getting my money’s worth with the meats instead of filling up on noodles! It usually has beef in it, but I make it meatless for my vegetarian boyfriend, and it’s still delicious. When I first learned to make it, I was following a laborious process that involved cooking each element of the dish separately, despite most of them being seasoned with almost the same ingredients and all of them being mixed together in the end. It was a real deterrent from me making the dish very often. But I experimented with just cooking it all in one pot by adding ingredients in the order of their cooking time, and it came out just as delicious, so now I make Japchae all the time!

Guessipe

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 TBSP sesame oil
• 2 TBSP honey
• 12 oz sweet potato starch noodles
• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 2 carrots, thinly sliced
• 1 TBSP minced garlic
• 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 8 oz shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 10 oz baby spinach
• 1 TBSP toasted sesame seeds
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix the soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, and honey until well combined.

Boil the noodles according to the package instructions. Rinse with cold water, drain, and set aside.

Stir fry the onions and carrots with a couple spoonfuls of sauce over medium heat for 1 minute.

Add the garlic, red bell peppers, shiitake mushrooms, and a couple more spoonfuls of sauce and cook for 2 more minutes.

Stir in the spinach, noodles, and the remainder of the sauce and cook just until the spinach wilts. Remove from heat.

Toss with sesame seeds. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve!