3/26/17

Rice with red beans

Asia

Rice is very important to Korean cuisine. It’s the center of pretty much every meal and in fact the Korean word for “cooked rice” (bap: 밥) can also mean “meal.” Most of the time we Koreans eat white rice, or multigrain rice, but on special occasions we prepare rice mixed with red beans, called patbap.

Patbap tastes a little sweet, salty, and nutty and has a wonderful texture. It’s also a lovely reddish-purple color, which is one reason it’s prepared for special occasions like birthdays (and especially children’s birthdays): the red color is known to ward off evil spirits in traditional Korean culture.

This special occasion rice needs time to prepare, which is one reason Koreans don’t have it often. Red beans are very hard so you need to spend some time boiling them to make them soft. I use short grain rice in this recipe but you could also make it with chapssal (sweet rice) which will be really chewy like rice cake.

Once they learn individual recipes, my readers and viewers often ask me how they’re used together to make a typical Korean meal. So in this video I show you how to make a nice meal using Korean banchan (side dishes) and mitbanchan (preserved side dishes), including kimchi, kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi), wanja-jeon (meat patties), sukju-oi-namul (a mung bean sprout and cucumber side dish), and doenjang-jjigae (fermented bean paste stew).

Ingredients (4 servings)

½ cup red beans (Azuki beans)
2 cups short grain rice
½ teaspoon salt

Directions

Prepare the beans

Rinse the beans in cold water and strain. Put in a heavy pot with 4 cups of water. Boil for 10 minutes over medium high heat. Then turn down the heat and cook for 50 minutes.
Strain the beans and reserve the red bean water to make rice with later. Let the water cool down thoroughly.

Prepare the rice

Put the rice into a heavy bottomed pot. Rinse in cold water and drain, then scrub the wet rice with your hand.
Rinse and drain a couple of times until the drained water is clear, then drain out the last of the water by tilting the pot as much as you can.
Add the cooled down red bean water. We need 2½ cups so if you don’t have enough make up the difference with clear water. Add salt and let it soak for 30 minutes.

Make patbap

Boil for 10 minutes over medium high heat.
Open the lid and mix it up from top to bottom so everything is cooked evenly. Cover, turn down the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes.