Kimchee fried rice challenge

It's not kimchee fried rice without the eggs, scallions, kim, and kimchee!

This is a must for the rice! It rounds out the flavor.

Last week, I saw this video on Facebook about this chef named Deuki Hong making kimchee fried rice. He used bacon—specifically from lardon, eggs, onions, and other ingredients I already had around the house that were similar if not the same. The next day, one of my neighbors was giving away some extra sheets of kim, or dried seasoned seaweed, so I gladly picked up a few packs from her because I knew that I would use it in my cooking. Kim is good on top of rice, musubi, in ramen, in salads, or by itself. It's really good for you and it tastes damn good, too.

I've made fried rice before, but I could never get mine to taste as good as the ones I order from the restaurants. After using Deuki's video as a guide, I was able to make it very similar, and I think I know why: Lots of fat, butter, and oil. There is the initial fat from the bacon, olive oil to cook the eggs with, sesame oil to stir fry the kkakdugi kimchee, and butter to mix in with the gochujang sauce. (I highly recommend Kerrygold grassfed butter!)

I varied from Deuki's ingredients by adding slices of Chinese sausage into the fried rice, using Basmati instead of Jasmine (both long-grain, both dry well for stir fry), using regular pork belly from the Asian grocery store instead of salt-cured lardon, and kkakdugi instead of napa cabbage kimchee because I am loyal to kkakdugi and always have a jar in my refrigerator. :D

I'm including Deuki's video in this post because I didn't use a recipe and I certainly don't want to claim his recipe for mine. I cooked with my eyes and used his video as a guideline. At first, I wondered why I had to put a bunch of gochujang butter into already fried rice, but trust me, it matters. In the end, once all the toppings are on the rice, you mix it all up and eat it. And it is so very good. Ignoring thoughts of going to the gym the next day, I ate a bowl, then had so much left over that I managed to give some to a neighbor, and she said it was delicious! If you get a chance to make this, I'm pretty sure it will be delicious, too. Or hey, if I know you personally, I can cook with you. You let me know! Hahaha

Ta fañocho!