Spicy-sweet gochujang elevates this simple chicken stir-fry
In this recipe from our cookbook ' Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year,' the complexly flavored Korean refrigerator staple is balanced by the pepperiness and pungency of ginger and garlic, plus a splash of salty soy sauce and a spoonful of sugar to round everything out.
Many brands of gochujang are available in the U.S., though quality varies widely. When shopping, start by reading the ingredient list. Traditional gochujang should contain little more than gochugaru (red chili flakes), glutinous rice, fermented soybeans and salt. The product's label also should specify its heat level.
Cooking the chicken on on each side creates deeply flavorful browning, so resist the urge to flip it more than once or stir it in the pan. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and scallions. Serve with steamed rice and a chilled beer.
Stir-Fried Gochujang Chicken
Start to finish: 30 minutes
Servings: 4
Ingredients:
¼ cup gochujang
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon white sugar
3 tablespoons neutral oil
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut crosswise into thirds
3 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
Directions:
In a small bowl, whisk together the gochujang, soy sauce and sugar; set aside.
In a 12-inch skillet over medium-high, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the chicken in an even layer and cook without stirring until browned on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Reduce to medium, then flip the chicken and cook without stirring until browned on the second sides, 3 to 4 minutes.
Add the garlic and ginger; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the gochujang mixture and cook, scraping up any browned bits and occasionally turning the chicken, until the sauce has thickened lightly and coats the chicken, 2 to 3 minutes.
Optional garnish: Toasted sesame seeds OR sliced scallions OR both
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more recipes, go to Christopher Kimball's Milk Street at 177milkstreet.com/ap
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
1.5 million loans, 840,000 visitors and counting, NLB's mobile libraries keep reading accessible
SINGAPORE – Every other Saturday, Ms Hirma Sheeryn and her children like to take a walk – not to the mall, park or playground, but to visit Molly. The National Library Board's (NLB) mobile library, affectionately called 'Molly', has since 2022 become a regular sight in the 35-year-old homemaker's Punggol neighbourhood, where it stays for half a day. With four children in tow, Ms Sheeryn appreciates that it takes them just under five minutes to get to Molly, compared with a journey to her nearest library, Punggol Regional Library at One Punggol lifestyle hub, which is about five LRT stops away from her home. She and her two daughters, aged seven and nine, who are the more frequent visitors in the family to the mobile library, enjoy the variety of books among the 3,000 titles carried by the bright blue bus. The two girls have been more interested in reading since visiting Molly, she said. They are among 840,000 users who have visited Molly since it first hit the roads in 2008. The places include pre-schools, special education (Sped) schools and voluntary welfare organisations. Over the past decade, the mobile library service has chalked up nearly 1.56 million book loans. In 2024 alone, it lent more than 116,000 books. It is among initiatives in Singapore to boost access to reading for underserved communities. Since Molly's inception, the fleet has grown to three vehicles – besides the bigger one, two smaller ones were launched in 2014, said Ms Tan Chui Peng, director of public libraries at NLB. Big Molly visits two locations daily, holds up to 15 adults or 25 children, with space for up to five wheelchairs, and carries 3,000 books. The mini Mollys were set up to bring the library experience to younger children aged six and below, and were built to navigate smaller roads near pre-schools. They operate on weekdays, and can each accommodate 12 to 15 children and two adults, with a collection of 1,500 books. Molly visits Sped schools and social service agencies monthly, and the mini Mollys visit pre-schools at least twice a year. Since April 2014, the mobile libraries have made at least 8,000 visits to various sites, said Ms Tan, with the most visited being Pathlight School, which has three campuses. They have also recently been visiting primary schools that have a high number of pupils who receive financial assistance, Ms Tan said, as well as nursing homes, which they hope to visit more. A 2025 study by the National Institute of Education (NIE) and NLB, which focused on low-income families living in rental flats, looked at the reading resources of 37 families. Over six months, it sought to find out whether children who visited a mobile library experienced reading enjoyment, frequency and proficiency. The households in the study had limited books at home and little exposure to reading in either English or mother tongue languages. Of the families surveyed, 43 per cent were found to have never visited public libraries at all owing to a lack of time, concerns about book damage and unfamiliarity with borrowing books. They were also unaware of the mobile library service's existence, or did not know they could borrow books from the bus. For families who did start visiting a mobile library regularly, the study found that the children became more excited about reading, showed improved vocabulary and print recognition, and made book-borrowing a part of their routine. Parents said they appreciated the convenience and less intimidating atmosphere compared with public libraries. Associate Professor Loh Chin Ee of NIE, the study's principal investigator, said that Molly brought books and library resources to neighbourhoods in a friendly and cosier setting, which can help to address the literacy gap in low-income communities. 'Molly has the potential to help families become more familiar with library resources,' said Prof Loh, adding that regular use over some time builds routine. Still, even with better physical access to books, psychological and social barriers – like potential costs or unfamiliarity with library systems – still deter some families. Simple outreach efforts, such as placing Molly's schedule in lift lobbies or sending WhatsApp reminders, could boost engagement, the study suggested. Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction Discover how to enjoy other premium articles here
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Pilots shut off wrong engine in South Korea crash that killed 179, report finds
[Source] South Korea's Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board revealed on July 19 that the pilots of Jeju Air Flight 2216 shut down the wrong engine during an emergency after a bird strike, leading to the fatal crash on December 29, 2024. The interim findings, based on cockpit voice recordings, flight data and wreckage analysis, showed the flight crew mistakenly switched off the less-damaged left engine rather than the right engine that had suffered the bird strike. This critical error left the aircraft with reduced thrust during an emergency landing attempt near Muan International Airport. Investigators reported that shutting down the functioning engine led to the loss of key electrical and hydraulic systems needed to deploy the landing gear. As a result the aircraft made a belly landing, slid into a concrete embankment and caught fire. The crash resulted in the deaths of 179 of the 181 people on board with only two cabin crew members surviving. The interim report's release was met with criticism from some victims' families who argued it focused too much on pilot error and not enough on other possible factors such as airport safety and infrastructure. The final investigation report is expected next year and authorities have begun reviewing safety procedures at regional airports including wildlife hazard management and emergency protocols. Trending on NextShark: This story is part of The Rebel Yellow Newsletter — a bold weekly newsletter from the creators of NextShark, reclaiming our stories and celebrating Asian American voices. Subscribe free to join the movement. If you love what we're building, consider becoming a paid member — your support helps us grow our team, investigate impactful stories, and uplift our community. Trending on NextShark: Subscribe here now! Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Americans may aspire to single-family homes, but in South Korea, apartments are king
For many Americans, the apartment where 29-year-old IT specialist Lee Chang-hee lives might be the stuff of nightmares. Located just outside the capital of Seoul, the building isn't very tall — just 16 stories — by South Korean standards, but the complex consists of 36 separate structures, which are nearly identical except for the building number displayed on their sides. The 2,000-plus units come in the same standardized dimensions found everywhere in the country (Lee lives in a '84C,' which has 84 square meters, or about 900 square feet, of floor space) and offer, in some ways, a ready-made life. The amenities scattered throughout the campus include a rock garden with a fake waterfall, a playground, a gym, an administration office, a senior center and a 'moms cafe.' But this, for the most part, is South Korea's middle-class dream of home ownership — its version of a house with the white picket fence. 'The bigger the apartment complex, the better the surrounding infrastructure, like public transportation, schools, hospitals, grocery stories, parks and so on,' Lee said. 'I like how easy it is to communicate with the neighbors in the complex because there's a well-run online community.' Most in the country would agree: Today, 64% of South Korean households live in such multifamily housing, the majority of them in apartments with five or more stories. Such a reality seems unimaginable in cities like Los Angeles, which has limited or prohibited the construction of dense housing in single-family zones. 'Los Angeles is often seen as an endless tableau of individual houses, each with their own yard and garden,' Max Podemski, an L.A.-based urban planner, wrote in The Times last year. 'Apartment buildings are anathema to the city's ethos.' In recent years, the price of that ethos has become increasingly apparent in the form of a severe housing shortage. In the city of Los Angeles, where nearly 75% of all residential land is zoned for stand-alone single-family homes, rents have been in a seemingly endless ascent, contributing to one of the worst homelessness crises in the country. As a remedy, the state of California has ordered the construction of more than 450,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan will almost certainly require the building of some form of apartment-style housing, but construction has lagged amid fierce resistance. Read more: South Korea celebrates the transformative power of 'Squid Game' Sixty years ago, South Korea stood at a similar crossroads. But the series of urban housing policies it implemented led to the primacy of the apartment, and in doing so, transformed South Korean notions of housing over the course of a single generation. The results of that program have been mixed. But in one important respect, at least, it has been successful: Seoul, which is half the size of the city of L.A., is home to a population of 9.6 million — compared with the estimated 3.3 million people who live here. For Lee, the trade-off is a worthwhile one. In an ideal world, she would have a garage for the sort of garage sales she's admired in American movies. 'But South Korea is a small country,' she said. 'It is necessary to use space as efficiently as possible.' Apartments, in her view, have spared her from the miseries of suburban housing. Restaurants and stores are close by. Easy access to public transportation means she doesn't need a car to get everywhere. 'Maybe it's because of my Korean need to have everything done quickly, but I think it'd be uncomfortable to live somewhere that doesn't have these things within reach at all times,' she said. 'I like to go out at night; I think it would be boring to have all the lights go off at 9 p.m.' *** Apartments first began appearing in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a government response to a housing crisis in the nation's capital — a byproduct of the era's rapid industrialization and subsequent urban population boom. In the 1960s, single-family detached dwellings made up around 95% of homes in the country. But over the following decade, as rural migrants flooded Seoul in search of factory work, doubling the population from 2.4 to 5.5 million, many in this new urban working class found themselves without homes. As a result, many of them settled in shantytowns on the city's outskirts, living in makeshift sheet-metal homes. The authoritarian government at the time, led by a former army general named Park Chung-hee, declared apartments to be the solution and embarked on a building spree that would continue under subsequent administrations. Eased height restrictions and incentives for construction companies helped add between 20,000 to 100,000 new apartment units every year. They were pushed by political leaders in South Korea as a high-tech modernist paradise, soon making them the most desirable form of housing for the middle and upper classes. Known as apateu, which specifically refers to a high-rise apartment building built as part of a larger complex — as distinct from lower stand-alone buildings — they symbolized Western cachet and upward social mobility. 'Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every big-name celebrity at the time appeared in apartment commercials,' recalled Jung Heon-mok, an anthropologist at the Academy of Korean Studies who has studied the history of South Korean apartments. 'But the biggest reason that apartments proliferated as they did was because they were done at scale, in complexes of five buildings or more.' Read more: First came the heat. Then the lovebugs invaded Essential to the modern apateu are the amenities — such as on-site kindergartens or convenience stores — that allow them to function like miniature towns. This has also turned them into branded commodities and class signifiers, built by construction conglomerates like Samsung, and taking on names like 'castle' or 'palace.' (One of the first such branded apartment complexes was Trump Tower, a luxury development built in Seoul in the late 1990s by a construction firm that licensed the name of Donald Trump.) All of this has made the detached single-family home, for the most part, obsolete. In Seoul, such homes now make up just 10% of the housing stock. Among many younger South Koreans like Lee, they are associated with retirement in the countryside, or, as she puts it: for 'grilling in the garden for your grandkids.' *** This model has not been without problems. There are the usual issues that come with dense housing. In buildings with poor soundproofing, 'inter-floor noise' between units is such a universal scourge that the government runs a noise-related dispute resolution center while discouraging people from angrily confronting their neighbors, a situation that occasionally escalates into headline-making violence. Some apartment buildings have proved to be too much even for a country accustomed to unsentimentally efficient forms of housing. One 19-story, 4,635-unit complex built by a big-name apartment brand in one of the wealthiest areas of Seoul looks so oppressive that it has become a curiosity, mocked by some as a prison or chicken coop. The sheer number of apartments has prompted criticism of Seoul's skyline as sterile and ugly. South Koreans have described its uniform, rectangular columns as 'matchboxes.' And despite the aspirations attached to them, there is also a wariness about a culture where homes are built in such disposable, assembly line-like fashion. Many people here are increasingly questioning how this form of housing, with its nearly identical layouts, has shaped the disposition of contemporary South Korean society, often criticized by its own members as overly homogenized and lockstep. 'I'm concerned that apartments have made South Koreans' lifestyles too similar,' said Maing Pil-soo, an architect and urban planning professor at Seoul National University. 'And with similar lifestyles, you end up with a similar way of thinking. Much like the cityscape itself, everything becomes flattened and uniform.' Jung, the anthropologist, believes South Korea's apartment complexes, with their promise of an atomized, frictionless life, have eroded the more expansive social bonds that defined traditional society — like those that extended across entire villages — making its inhabitants more individualistic and insular. 'At the end of the day, apartments here are undoubtedly extremely convenient — that's why they became so popular,' he said. 'But part of that convenience is because they insulate you from the concerns of the wider world. Once you're inside your complex and in your home, you don't have to pay attention to your neighbors or their issues.' Read more: They didn't know they were citizens. Now they are expected to serve in the South Korean military Still, Jung says this uniformity isn't all bad. It is what made them such easily scalable solutions to the housing crisis of decades past. It is also, in some ways, an equalizing force. 'I think apartments are partly why certain types of social inequalities you see in the U.S. are comparatively less severe in South Korea,' he said. Though many branded apartment complexes now resemble gated communities with exclusionary homeowner associations, Jung points out that on the whole, the dominance of multifamily housing has inadvertently encouraged more social mixing between classes, a physical closeness that creates the sense that everyone is inhabiting the same broader space. Even Seoul's wealthiest neighborhoods feel, to an extent that is hard to see in many American cities, porous and accessible. Wealthier often means having a nicer apartment, but an apartment all the same, existing in the same environs as those in a different price range. 'And even though we occasionally use disparaging terms like 'chicken coop' to describe them, once you actually step inside one of those apartments, they don't feel like that at all,' Jung said. 'They really are quite comfortable and nice.' *** None of this, however, has been able to stave off Seoul's own present-day housing affordability crisis. The capital has one of the most expensive apartment prices in the world on a price-per-square-meter basis, ranking fourth after Hong Kong, Zurich and Singapore, and ahead of major U.S. cities like New York or San Francisco, according to a report published last month by Deutsche Bank. One especially brutal stretch recently saw apartment prices in Seoul double in four years. Part of the reason for this is that apartments, with their standardized dimensions, have effectively become interchangeable financial commodities: An apartment in Seoul is seen as a much more surefire bet than any stock, leading to intense real estate investment and speculation that has driven up home prices. 'Buying an apartment here isn't just buying an apartment. The equivalent in the U.S. would be like buying an ideal single-family home with a garage in the U.S., except that it comes with a bunch of NVIDIA shares,' said Chae Sang-wook, an independent real estate analyst. 'In South Korea, people invest in apateu for capital gains, not cash flow from rent.' Some experts predict that, as the country enters another era of demographic upheaval, the dominance of apartments will someday be no more. If births continue to fall as dramatically as they have done in recent years, South Koreans may no longer need such dense housing. The ongoing rise of single-person households, too, may chip away at a form of housing built to hold four-person nuclear families. But Chae is skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. He points out that South Koreans don't even like to assemble their own furniture, let alone fix their own cars — all downstream effects of ubiquitous apartment living. 'For now, there is no alternative other than this,' he said. 'As a South Korean, you don't have the luxury of choosing.' Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
