10 Excellent Korean Cookbooks I Think Are Worth Owning

The concept of a Korean cookbook would likely mystify my Korean-born parents, who I’ve never seen use so much as a teaspoon in the kitchen. Neither of them ever measures anything when they cook, nor did their parents before them. Koreans might say they all have sohn-mat, a term that roughly translates to “taste of the hands” and refers to someone with an instinct for flavor, a natural-born cook. I would say it means that whenever you’re trying to pry any sort of recipe out of them (you know, for posterity), their response is always, “Just add a little bit of this and a pinch of that and a big spoonful of that.”

Fortunately, you don’t need to have sohn-mat (or understand my parents’ cryptic recipe instructions) to make excellent Korean food these days. Since the 2010s, there’s been a notable explosion of Korean cookbooks on the market, and some of my favorite cookbooks in my collection are written by Korean, Korean-born, and Korean American authors. (This Stained Page News story by Helin Jung on the history of Korean cookbooks in America is an absolutely fascinating read).

While there are so many more Korean cookbooks out there than this list could ever hope to cover, these are ten books that I—a Korean American cook and food writer—really love, each with a unique point of view to contribute to the ever-growing conversation about the thrilling possibilities of Korean and Korean American food. If ever the day comes when I’m forced to whittle down my 120-plus (and growing) cookbook collection, these would make the cut.

Koreatown: A Cookbook

$35

$17 at Amazon

This dynamic, colorful, and soulful love letter to Koreatowns across America felt groundbreaking to me when it came out in 2016, and still feels timeless today. It defied so many of the day’s established conventions for selling an audience on a lesser-known cuisine. Instead, Koreatown fully embraces all the things that make these Korean American enclaves uniquely special through its combination of bold design (the banchan-grid cover is iconic) and reportage-style photographs that capture moments of everyday life unfolding in often “unglamorous” locations like underground shopping centers and strip malls. The recipes manage to strike a delicate balance between being achievable and tempting to try at home, while not watering down any of the essence of Koreatown cooking. You’ll find a mix of Korean American classics (kimchi fried rice with bacon) alongside recipes from guest chefs who have found their own culinary footing in the diaspora (such as chef Edward Lee’s Southern-inspired cornmeal and shrimp pajeon).

Banchan: 60 Korean American Recipes for Delicious, Shareable Sides

$28

$16 at Amazon View on Bookshop.org

To the uninitiated, the many small plates of assorted savory side dishes that greet you upon sitting down to a traditional Korean meal, known as banchan, are often a total revelation. A Korean meal simply isn’t complete without at least a few banchan at the table, and the good news is many of them are quite simple to prepare with Caroline Choe’s playful, eye-catching book as your guide. This charming book offers a taste of some of the main sub-categories of banchan, from ferments and preserves to fresh vegetable dishes, soups, and savory pancakes. Many of the recipes draw on Caroline’s American upbringing as the daughter of Korean-born immigrants, resulting in deliciously surprising treats like fresh strawberry kimchi and spring greens namul quiche. While the book features some meat and seafood dishes, most recipes place vegetables front and center. If you’re trying to embrace more plants in your diet, banchan is a great way to up your veggie intake.

Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home

$35

$18 at Amazon $33 at Barnesandnoble.com View on Bookshop.org

I didn’t grow up in Atlanta, but New York Times food and cooking columnist Eric Kim’s evocative recipes and gorgeous writing somehow make me nostalgic for Atlanta, perhaps because no matter the differences between every Korean American family and community (and their cooking customs and tastes therein), some foods incontrovertibly feel like home, like griddled Spam or crispy donkkaseu (breaded fried pork cutlets). Kim’s debut book is deeply personal, equal parts cookbook, novel, and love letter to his mother Jean. It’s also the story of a complicated, ultimately triumphant homecoming that was only made possible through Kim’s own interrogation of how and where we find home. Kim’s recipes are exactly what I want to eat: Think pan-seared rib eye with gochujang butter, or creamy bucatini with gim (roasted seasoned seaweed). This is the book I would buy for the friend who reads cookbooks as if they were novels (me).

My Korea: Traditional Flavors, Modern Recipes

$40

$32 at Amazon

If a friend asked me which cookbook they should buy as an introduction to modern Korean food, this instant classic is the one I’d recommend. It’s a highly honed piece of craftsmanship full of understated beauty, from its bold yet clean and stripped-back design to the beautiful photos. (Full transparency: I love this book so much that I hired the photographer, Kristin Teig, to shoot my own upcoming cookbook!) The recipes are a well-curated edit of what I would consider some of Korea’s most well-known dishes, from yangnyeom-gejang (spicy marinated raw blue crab) to dolsot (sizzling hot stone) bibimbap to doenjang jjigae (fermented soybean stew). But, this being a cookbook written by a Michelin-starred chef, I appreciate the addition of slightly more ambitious recipes, such as juicy pork and shrimp “dumplings” wrapped in perilla leaves instead of dough, which are then delicately battered and fried. The book also has an exceptionally thoughtful guide to shopping for Korean ingredients.

Sohn-mat: Recipes and Flavors of Korean Home Cooking

$35

$31 at Amazon

The pandemic forced Monica Lee’s beloved Los Angeles restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu to close in September 2020, but Beverly devotees are blessed to have Sohn-mat (reminder: Korean for “taste of the hands,” a term used to describe a cook with natural instincts for flavor). This is Lee’s blueprint for recreating her iconic soon tofu chigae, or soft tofu stew (which you may also see spelled as sundubu jjigae or soondubu jjigae). Lee spends a third of the book going deep on every element of her famous chigaes, with lots of information and advice on buying the right ingredients and the Korean earthenware serving vessels called ttukbaegi (integral to the eating experience at Beverly), as well as recipes for broths, spicy seasoning paste, and the chigaes themselves. The rest of the book is dedicated to the dishes you’ll want on the table to eat alongside your soon tofu chigae and a hot bowl of rice: all kinds of banchans, kimchi, appetizers, large platters to share, and stews and soups.

Jang: The Soul of Korean Cooking (More than 60 Recipes Featuring Gochujang, Doenjang, and Ganjang)

$35

$15 at Amazon

It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a book devoted to jangs before now. “Jang” refers to the family of fermented soybean products that make up the all-important “mother flavors” that give Korean food its undeniably unique flavor. You’re familiar with jangs if you’ve ever had bibimbap or cooked with gochujang, the increasingly popular sweet fermented red pepper paste that’s in everything these days from glazed fried chicken to cookies. This book, written by the esteemed chef of Michelin-star restaurant Mingles in Seoul, bridges the traditional with the modern, going deep into the rich history of jangs in Korean cuisine and culture, accompanied by stunning photos of traditional Korean artisans in the jang-making process. It’s divided into three sections: ganjang (Korean soy sauce), doenjang (fermented soybean paste), and gochujang (fermented red pepper paste), with a mix of traditional Korean dishes as well as recipes that show how jangs can be a welcome, versatile addition to a global pantry. (Think tagliatelle with ganjang ragù, or Greek salad with doenjang vinaigrette.) While this isn’t the book I’d recommend to someone brand-new to Korean cuisine, I’d buy it for the friend whose idea of a weekend well-spent is getting lost in the aisles of a specialty foods store, then coming home to make something delicious.

The Korean Cookbook

$55

$39 at Amazon

Phaidon’s single-subject cookbooks devoted to major culinary cuisines of the world are objects worth gracing your coffee table, to be sure. But time and again, I’ve been delighted by the invaluable trove of information these books contain that I can seldom find in other English texts. At 496 pages, The Korean Cookbook is an absolute beast, covering the country’s history, geography, culinary evolution, native ingredients, and much more along with the 350 recipes, many of which I had never heard of or seen in any other English book. The chef-authors strongly emphasize the importance of vegetables and fermented and preserved foods in the evolution of hansik (Korean cuisine), and the recipes accordingly showcase the vast and varied Korean preparations of vegetables, kimchi, and preserved pickles. The recipes were developed with the home cook in mind (though I don’t think this home cook will be making the recipe for 26 pounds of doenjang anytime soon), and indeed many can be easily prepared after a quick trip to H Mart. Other recipes might present more of a challenge to those who don’t have access to Korea’s native vegetables and animal proteins, though they’re fascinating to read about all the same.

Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking: Authentic Dishes for the Home

$38

$18 at Amazon $38 at Barnesandnoble.com

Like the rest of the internet, I consider the wildly popular YouTuber Maangchi (a.k.a. Emily Kim) to be Korean Mother (and I have a Korean mother). It’s impossible not to love her sweet demeanor, her wild outfits, and her knockout-delicious food. Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking is her first cookbook, which came out in 2015, and reads like a greatest-hits compilation of the recipes on her website, like bulgogi, seafood-scallion pancake (haemul-pajeon), and sticky-sweet Korean fried chicken (yangnyeom-tongdak). Maangchi excels at delivering the flavors of her youth growing up in Korea (as opposed to in the Korean American diaspora) with her American and global audience, making this book comprehensive but accessible. Maangchi does a particularly excellent job of explaining the essentials of the Korean pantry—you’ll want to bring this book as your field guide on a trip to the Korean grocer.

Learning Korean: Recipes for Home Cooking

$35

$26 at Amazon

Chef Peter Serpico’s recipes are informed by his lived experience as a South Korean-born transracial adoptee growing up in Laurel, Maryland. The recipes in this efficient little book are definitely nontraditional, but clearly relay Serpico’s unique point of view as someone who learned to connect with his Korean heritage in the kitchen well into his adulthood. He has made a thoughtful effort to develop recipes that are accessible to home cooks of all experience levels, as well as those who might not have access to a Korean grocer or specialty store. You probably wouldn’t find a recipe for curly parsley kimchi or pickled iceberg lettuce in a Korean cookbook that hewed more closely to traditional fare, but that’s exactly what makes Serpico’s book interesting to me. I also appreciate that although Serpico is an acclaimed chef with a fine dining pedigree, many of these recipes are streamlined and exceptionally achievable, even for busy weeknights.

Pocha: Simple Korean Food from the Streets of Seoul

$38

$14 at Amazon

Korean-born, London-based author Su Scott’s second cookbook, devoted to the street food culture of Seoul, is the book she says she wanted to write even before she penned her quietly beautiful debut book, Rice Table. (The titular “pocha” is shorthand for “pojangmacha,” the many street stalls or carts you’ll find slinging cheap and comforting snacks and drinks in South Korea.) The book’s cleverly constructed chapters take you on a daylong feast: Start with pine nut porridge with oatmeal (jat juk) in All Day Dining, break for smoked salmon bibimbap in Market Lunch, grab a salted Nutella pancake for a pick-me-up in 4PM Slump, and wind down with some anju (drinking snacks) washed down with lots of soju in Feasting Under the Stars. Scott is a poet. Her Seoul, captured in mesmerizing photography, is deeply enticing, electric, alive, and full of history. You can’t help but want to follow her through the streets of the city, rapturously eating your way through 24 delicious hours in her beloved hometown.

Why We’re the Experts

• Christina Chaey is a Korean American recipe developer, writer, and soon-to-be cookbook author. She is an ardent lover of cookbooks and, at last count, owns more than 120 of them.
• She spent seven years as an editor at Bon Appétit, where she wrote and edited stories and developed recipes in the Test Kitchen.
• She worked as a line cook under chef Suzanne Cupps at the now-closed Untitled at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she cultivated her love for local, seasonal cooking.