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Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.
I first tasted Korean food at the edge of a clear cut a few miles from Detroit. Our fire crew was cutting line around an old unit (from “timber sale unit,” what people who work in the Oregon woods call a clear cut), and a Korean American guy named Bill unwrapped a foil package of bulgogi for lunch and passed it around. The thinly sliced beef flavored with soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil, sugar and green onion was a revelation.
Long after that fire season and summer job ended, I learned to make kimchi from the late Matt Choi and his mom. When I’d drive to Beaverton or Southeast 82nd Avenue in search of the chile flake called gochugaru, I also found the funky, fermented gochujang, the spicy-sweet miso-adjacent Korean condiment.
This completely inauthentic recipe borrows those Korean flavors for an all-American classic. For a cross-cultural entree, serve it hot with rice and very thinly sliced cabbage tossed with a few drops of toasted sesame oil and rice vinegar. But it’s even better cold on a sandwich.
Kimchi Meatloaf
- ½ lb ground pork
- ½ lb ground beef
- 3 eggs
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- Piece of ginger about the size of your thumb, finely chopped
- 1 bunch green onions, sliced
- 1 cup kimchi, chopped
- 1 cup panko
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon MSG
- 2 teaspoons kosher-style sea salt
Mix everything except the ketchup and gochujang together in a large bowl. Transfer the mix to a 10-inch skillet and form it into a loaf shape down the center. Mix a quarter cup of ketchup and a quarter cup of gochujang together to make gochujang glaze, and spread it over the top and down the sides. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, and let cool 15–20 minutes before slicing. You can pack it into a standard loaf pan for a thicker meatloaf, but bake it a bit longer, maybe 45 minutes.