Crawford Afterschool: Kimbap is like the Korean version of a sandwich

In preparation of a visit to Koreatown, we started learning a little bit about Korean culture. First, we made some delicious kimbap. Kimbap is like the Korean version of a sandwich: you just stuff whatever you can find in the fridge into some rice wrapped in seaweed for a quick lunch!

First, a tasting of store-bought Kimbap. We guessed each ingredient in here – eggs, crab meat, tofu, radishes, carrots, spinach and mushrooms – and learned about how they grow / how they were made into food.

Then, we tasted a little piece of each traditional filling that is going into our kimbap. The teacher bought these already prepared (pickled, marinated, cooked, cut into strips) at P.A.T Groceries on Bloor Street in Koreatown. The rice was made by Angel in advance, it was seasoned with sesame oil and some salt. However, we thought you can only taste the sesame oil and not so much the salt. (Note: season the rice while it's hot, but let it cool until it's comfortable to touch, though if the rice is near room temp, it won't stick to the ingredients as well.)

Theo demonstrates an important trick in this picture: wetting your hands before handling the rice helps to keep your fingers stickiness-free!

We figured out which way the ingredients go eventually.

Wax paper is used just to keep from too much rice sticking to the bamboo mat


Finn is on a roll!

It's not as easy as it looks, we all needed a bit of help.

We each made two small rolls of Kimbap – one traditional and the other experiemntal. Other than some traditional fillings that were left, we had mango, kiwi, and avocado for our experimental rolls!