Roasted seaweed is powerhouse ingredient in this pantry pasta
One of the things I love most about writing every month on the topic of pantry-friendly meals is that it has forced me to think outside of my own notion of the kitchen pantry. The ingredients I typically have on hand could be vastly different from those found in my neighbor’s kitchen.
Take a look inside New York Times food writer Eric Kim’s kitchen and you’ll likely find seasoned roasted seaweed, also known as gim. In his debut cookbook, “Korean American,” Kim highlights the versatility of gim in a recipe for creamy bucatini, “a simple, perfect little black dress of a pantry dish,” he writes.
Though often marketed as a snack, Kim’s mantra is that roasted seaweed is much more than that: “It’s a powerhouse ingredient,” he writes, calling it “one of the greatest Korean pantry items of all time.”
Over the phone, Kim recounts memories of watching old ladies at the end of the grocery store checkout line hand-roasting paper-size sheets of gim over a metal griddle, brushing them with sesame oil and then sprinkling them with salt. He loves adding it to “anything that has a comforting blandness,” he says, mentioning porridge, rice dishes and oatmeal as examples.
“You need a blank canvas to really be able to appreciate the nuances of the umami in the seaweed and also the nuttiness of sesame oil.”
While not all gim is brushed with sesame oil, its nuttiness is one of the ingredient’s defining characteristics for Kim. That flavor, along with salt, are what distinguish gim from Japanese nori, which is often unseasoned. “It’s that flavor of the sesame oil and salt that makes you think of gim,” Kim says. “So there’s a reason I’m fortifying any gim dish with those two extra ingredients, because I think if you’re Korean and you grew up with gim, you kind of associate that flavor, salty and nutty, with roasted seaweed.”
This dish came about while Kim was experimenting during the pandemic. Inspired by fettuccine Alfredo, his recipe in the book calls for heavy cream and fresh garlic to create a simple sauce to slick delightfully chewy bucatini noodles, and the addition of gim “has this umami as if you’ve added shrimp to your Alfredo,” he says. I made this already pantry-friendly recipe even more so by using canned evaporated milk and garlic powder to make the sauce.
Kim urges cooks not to be shy about salt when preparing this dish: “You really need extra salt to pick up the flavors of those quiet ingredients,” he says. “I call them quiet because they’re not punching you in the face. But if you coax them out well, then it’s just a very comforting flavor to me.”
Kim credits his recipe tester, Rebecca Firkser, who suggested the pinch of gochugaru, a mild Korean red chile flake with a hint of sweet smokiness. “It’s kind of nice to have a little bit of that heat,” he says. “It’s a very rich dish.” In my first test of this recipe, I didn’t have any gochugaru on hand and grabbed crushed red pepper flakes, which have a much louder spice profile. Though I enjoyed it, Kim suggests Aleppo pepper as a closer substitute.
Once plated, you crush the gim with your hands and messily sprinkle it over the pasta. Says Kim, “I think there’s some beauty in the organized chaos.”