University of Arizona students to compete in a Korean Kimchi Recipe Contest on Thursday, part of a collaboration between the UA’s East Asian Studies Department, the Center for East Asian Studies and the Korea Agro-Fisheries company.
The winners will receive scholarships, with $1,500 for the first-place winner. Eight finalists will participate in a cook-off in which they’ll be able to showcase their creations.
“There is a lot of interest at UA on K-Pop, K-Food and K-Culture,” assistant professor Sandra Park said. “We received over 20 entries across all social media platforms.”
The first stage of the contest was an online round in which participants at UA could submit their recipes on social media. For the faculty involved, including Park, Sunyoung Yang and Sojung Chun and Jieun Ryu, the contest served as a way for the UA students to learn about Korean culture through a hands-on and creative activity.
“One of the students made an empanada,” said associate professor Yang. “The student was able to find the similarities between the cultures. Empanadas look a little bit like dumplings. It’s street food.”
Park said that she hopes the program continues to grow through partnerships as the one they’ve formed with the Los Angeles branch of the Korean food company. During the event Thursday, there will be a Kimchi conference presented by people from the World Institute of Kimchi, a kimchi-making demo, Korean food product giveaways, exhibitions, photo zone, a K-Pop dance performance by UA’s dance team UnderSkore, and a presentation by award-winning four-time James Beard semifinalist Chef Ji Hye Kim, who owns Miss Kim in Michigan.
The student who made the kimchi bulgogi empanadas was Lily Jones, a undergraduate student in the East Asian Studies program. She decided to make an empanada recipe because of her own heritage.
“I’m Mexican and Guatemalan and empanadas are something both of my nanas make,” Jones said. “But I’m also Yaqui and African American. My whole life is this big fusion.”
Her approach was to incorporate the freshness of the kimchi as a vegetable component of the dish along with the bulgogi as the star protein encased in the starch, the empanada pastry.
“There’s definitely room for improvement but it was good,” Jones said. “I never follow recipes as they should be and I don’t measure the ingredients.”
Jones said that she hopes the symbolism of her recipe shines through in the cook-off as well as making sure she delivers a tasty dish. She said it’s “easy to make a dish look good but it’s harder to make it taste good.”
“I’m not Korean myself,” Jones said. “But I think that there is a lot of diversity that can be shown for people and their interests. I’m this mix of Hispanic and indigenous cultures but there’s more than that than meets the eye.”
