Prep time: 20 min
Cooking time: 20 min
Servings: About 4 kimbaps

1. White rice, cooked and cooled (approx 200ml uncooked)

   • Rice must be cooled unless you want your seaweed to be soggy from the steam emitted by warm rice.

   • Admittedly this doesn't bother me when I'm very hungry, so go ahead and use warm rice if you're pressed for time.

2. Sesame oil x a few drizzles

3. Sesame seeds x a few shakes

4. Carrot x ½ medium, cut into long slices

5. Spam x 1 can, cut into long slices

6. Japanese cucumber x ½ cut into long slices

7. Danmuji x 1 packet (try to get the ones pre-sliced for kimbap)

8. Eggs x 3, beaten and fried in thin sheets

9. Butter

10. Roasted seaweed sheet x 1 packet

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1. Cook the rice. Add a few drizzles of sesame oil and a few shakes of white sesame seeds, then mix well and leave it to cool.

2. Steam the carrots and fry the spam in some cooking oil.

   • Skip steaming the carrots if you want that crunch in your kimbap.

3. Fry the eggs thinly in some butter.

4. Let all ingredients cool to about room temperature.

5. Lay out a piece of seaweed on a sushi rolling mat.

   • The surface the sushi rolling mat is placed on must be dry.

   • If you buy the Japanese nori sheets, you will see there are lines running across the seaweed. These are precut to make it easier for you to cut through later, so make sure you place the seaweed sheet with the lines running vertical, as shown in the pic below.

6. Spread rice thinly over the seaweed.

7. Arrange ingredients on the rice.

• The egg has to go on first, and as to everything else, it's up to you which order you want to put.

• Don't put too many ingredients or you will end up being unable to roll your kimbap.

8. Roll the kimbap.

• Use both hands to roll the kimbap as tightly as you can.

• Then, use the sushi roller to roll it once more, and squeeze it gently with both hands to make it adhere.

9. Cut the kimbap.

• Hold the kimbap gently but firmly with one hand, and use a sharp knife to slice through the kimbap.

• Try to follow the precut lines for easier cutting.

10. You're done! Enjoy the kimbap!

1. You can marinate more ingredients in sesame oil. The traditional kimbap recipes marinate everything in sesame oil - the carrots, the cucumbers, etc. You can do this to make it more fragrant, but it also adds a lot to the calories, and I find that it's already very delicious without marinating these ingredients.

2. You can sub out the spam for any other meat you want - tuna, beef bulgogi, spicy chicken, crabsticks, etc. There are vegetarian versions that use mushrooms or mock meat as well! Be as creative as you want with the main protein in this dish.

3. Make sure your seaweed sheets are the kind used for rolling sushi. This is particularly so if you buy Korean seaweed sheets. Quite a number of Korean seaweed sheets I bought in the past were the crispy kind that didn't roll very well!