Kimchi pasta

February 1, 2025 12:56 AM

It's kind of a gloomy day today. So, I don't have great food photos. That doesn't mean I don't have any good food, but it was already enough work to cook, and I think I used up most of my photo-taking energy on chicken and rice.

Anyway, as I was browsing youtube the other night, I saw a recipe for kimchi pasta and it looked really good. I mean, orange pasta always looks good. I also happened to already have kimchi in my fridge and half a box of rigatoni and some parmesan and some green onions, so I added this to my list of things to cook.

But that was last week. I ran out of all those ingredients, but I still wanted to make this pasta, so I bought more of everything today. Well, except for green onions. Aldi was completely out! I've watched enough Aaron and Claire youtube videos to know that Aaron's favorite ingredient is green onion, but well, we're gonna have to settle for cilantro.

I decided to double the recipe just so I would have plenty of leftovers (we'll see if I regret having too much leftover pasta). And this was actually a lot more work than I expected. There were a lot of things to cut up, kind of like stir fries. And it took me so long to grate the cheese, and my hand was so tired. Maybe I should invest in a box grater. Or maybe I should just buy a container of pre-grated parmesan.

Once I got to the actual cooking part of this, it was pretty easy. After I poured in the heavy cream, I thought it looked a little too creamy though. The youtube video made this look so orange! Mine was super pale compared to that. It kind of looked more like an alfredo or a mac n cheese. So, if I make this again, I might cut the heavy cream in half. It's probably healthier that way too.

I gotta say, even though I'm not too happy with the color, it doesn't taste bad! The kimchi, oyster sauce, mushroom, and bacon all add a lot of depth to the flavor and I was really digging that. I would totally make this again, but I'd definitely make some adjustments so it's easier.