Essential Korean

Cookbook author and son of South Korean immigrants shares some of the recipes that define the cuisine for him

“Daebak!” — pronounced DEH-bahk, often with a long, guttural emphasis on the first syllable — can be a noun, an adjective or an interjection that expresses approval when something is truly great.

It’s the Korean word my mother blurted out when she recently tasted my doenjang jjigae, a soybeanpaste stew that has taken me years to perfect.

Some might measure a Korean cook’s prowess by their kimchi, an intimate way to get to know someone’s sohn mat, or hand taste, the immeasurable quality of a cook’s personal touch. But I would argue that doenjang jjigae, the humblest and most basic of Korean stews, is a window into a cook’s soul. The precision with which the vegetables are cut, the ratio of broth to soybean paste, and the clarity and balance of flavors can reveal a lot about a cook’s palate, as well as their priorities. Are they showing off or aiming to nourish? Is the stew in your face, or soothing you throughout the meal like a weighted blanket?

When my mother said my doenjang jjigae was “daebak,” I finally felt that I had graduated from her master class in Korean cooking. As the son of South Korean immigrants, I’ve been attending it since I was old enough to walk, a little shadow following her around our suburban Atlanta kitchen.

I am no longer my mother’s shadow, but the way I cook now, the way I move and breathe in my New York City kitchen, has echoes of her movements, her breaths. So much of cooking is using your senses and following your gut, and I never experience those instincts more acutely than when I am making Korean food.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been Korean my whole life, and I’ve been cooking since I was 13, but only recently have I begun to feel like a Korean cook. Many of us are Korean because of what’s in our hearts, not how fluent we are in Hangul, what our parents and grandparents look like or where our families have decided to lay down roots.

These dishes stem mostly from South Korean food traditions, and especially from Seoul, because that’s where my parents are from. Some of these dishes are more than their ingredients, speaking not only to the history of a divided nation and a war, but also to a gorgeous history of empires. I’ve written the recipes in English, but know that their souls are in Korean. And if you need a place to start, I hear the doenjang jjigae is daebak.

BOBBI LIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOS A spread for samgyeopsal, a dish with a name that refers to pork belly’s three layers — the fat cap and the two leaner layers of meat below it, one light and one dark. A chill way to have Korean barbecue at home, this dish is less a recipe and more a road map to dinner.

“I’ve been cooking since I was 13, but only recently have I begun to feel like a Korean cook,” writes cookbook author Eric Kim.