A great way to use leftover rice and a nice cooked treatment of kimchi, which you can buy at any Korean market if you don’t want to make your own. Good as a side dish with Korean food, this also makes a fine snack or even a main course (add chicken, pork, beef, or shrimp if you like). The butter is a contemporary feature, but it’s how I learned this (from a Korean-American friend), and I like it that way.

　　

Ingredients

makes 4 servings

　　2 tablespoons dark sesame oil

　　1 cup roughly chopped Kimchi (page 444)

　　2 tablespoons butter or more sesame oil

　　4 cups cooked short-grain rice (page 507)

　　1 tablespoon soy sauce

　　

Step 1

Put the oil in a large skillet, preferably nonstick, over medium-high heat. Add the kimchi and cook until it softens a bit, just 5 minutes or so. Add the butter and rice and stir. Cook, stirring infrequently, until the rice is hot, 5 or 10 minutes.

　　

Step 2

Let the rice brown a bit on the bottom, then stir this browned part back into the mixture, season with soy sauce, and serve hot.

　　The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman. © 2005 by Mark Bittman. Published by Broadway Books. All Rights Reserved.MARK BITTMAN is the author of the blockbuster The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway, 2005) and the classic bestseller How to Cook Everything, which has sold more than one million copies. He is also the coauthor, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, of Simple to Spectacular and Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef. Mr. Bittman is a prolific writer, makes frequent appearances on radio and television, and is the host of The Best Recipes in the World, a 13-part series on public television. He lives in New York and Connecticut.