SHEET PAN JAPCHAE WITH ROASTED MUSHROOMS
Recipe is online here.
I love japchae and I love mushrooms, so combining both sounded like a winner!
The idea here is that the mushrooms are roasted on a sheet pan, and the noodles and sauce are added and it’s all mixed together again on the sheet pan too.
Well, I had more mushrooms than my pan will fit at a go, so I used my wok instead. I dry-sauteed the mushrooms, boiled the noodles when those were done and made the sauce while they cooked, and then combined everything in the wok.
The sauce here uses both brown sugar and maple syrup, but I found it overly sweet compared to other versions - easy to adjust down next time. He uses only one clove of garlic for 8oz of noodles - I doubled that and still found it less, so if you like your japchae garlicky / the way restaurants serve it, increase to taste. Soy sauce also needed increasing for my taste.
Even though I didn’t use a sheet pan, I can’t imagine combining the noodles and sauce in that flat a container - I usually do it in a shallow steel bowl, and in my wok this time. I also prefer finishing my noodles over heat at the end (can’t remember which of Maangchi or Koreatown had that tip) so the sauce fully absorbs and the noodles are springy rather than soggy. He also left out the step where you cut up the noodles after boiling.
This was a nice japchae, but I missed the other flavor and texture components that make japchae so delicious: the sweetness of onions, the crunch of carrots, the softness of spinach, and so on. The sauce also needed significant doctoring for my taste.