New cookbooks from Sarah Ahn and Roy Choi take different approaches to Korean cuisine

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Two new cookbooks take different approaches – one modern and one more traditional – to Korean cuisine. First, Roy Choi is the co-founder of Los Angeles' Kogi BBQ food trucks, which put Korean-Mexican fusion on the map. He rose to fame cooking meat, but his first full cookbook The Choi of Cooking focuses on vegetables. In today's episode, Choi speaks – and cooks – with NPR's Ailsa Chang. Over breakfast burritos, they discuss the chef's quest to elevate vegetables and break what Choi calls an addiction to junk food. Then, Sarah Ahn became social-media-famous for posting videos of her mother's traditional Korean recipes. Now, the two women are out with Umma, a cookbook that focuses on preserving identity through recipes. In today's episode, Ahn speaks with Here & Now's Lisa Mullins about collaborating with her mom, the cultural history of kimchi, and the difference between Korean and Southern fried chicken.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Amper's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong, and today we are talking about
0:06.7	Korean food. Now, any cuisine goes through changes as it gets passed down from generation to
0:12.2	generation, but because so much of culture is wrapped up in food, in a lot of ways holding on
0:18.5	to traditional forms of cooking is a way of holding on to your culture.
0:23.5	In a bit, we'll hear from a social media cooking star who wrote a book about learning to cook from her Korean mother.
0:30.2	But first, let's throw all that talk about tradition out the window for a bit.
0:33.8	Roy Choi is a chef who got famous for his Korean Mexican food truck, Kogi Barbecue.
0:39.1	Pretty much whenever I'm in L.A., I try to get my hands on, I don't know, some sort of burrito
0:43.3	filled with Korean short ribs or bulgogi. But in his new cookbook, the Choi of cooking,
0:48.5	there is a heavy emphasis on vegetables. And up ahead, he tells Empress Elsa Chang that
0:53.7	he needed to break his own
0:55.6	addiction to unhealthy food. That's coming up. In the U.S., national security news can feel
1:02.4	far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our
1:09.0	new show, sourcesources and Methods.
1:14.1	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:17.3	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:22.2	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:30.2	The chef Roy Choi is a legend here in Los Angeles. So when I heard that he wanted to cook something with me, I was like, heck yeah. And you go in and the kitchen feels like a food truck.
1:35.6	Oh, it's tight. It's really tight. Buts be button in here. Oh yeah, Buts be button.
1:40.6	Bucon. Yeah. Toy made a name for himself with his roving Kogi barbecue food trucks,
1:47.6	which offer Korean short-ribed tacos, kimchi casidias.
1:51.5	I mean, he put Korean-Mexican fusion on the map here.
	...

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