Gaeran Mari (Korean Egg Roll Up)

At one of our favorite Korean restaurants, it's a treat when one of the banchan winds up being Gaeran Mari, which looks like an omelette.  It's extremely easy to make - the difficult part is folding the egg.

This simple gaeran mari I made only had onions, but you can add almost anything to your gaeran mari - shredded carrots, green onion, a sheet of nori, anything you can chop/shred finely and allows you to roll up the egg.

Gaeran Mari - a semi original recipe.

Ingredients (for two people)

• 2 whole eggs + 1 egg white (or one egg yolk, whichever you prefer.)  Two eggs alone are good for a 10" frying pan.  If you have a 12" one, you can go with 2 eggs + 1 yolk/white, or even 3 eggs.  Experiment to see which cooks up the best for you.
• green onion (three stalks)
• shredded carrot (2 tablespoons, just about.)
• pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

1.  Crack eggs into a bowl.

2.  Cut green onions into the bowl.  Add the shredded carrots.  Add a pinch of salt, and a dash of pepper.  Mix to combine.

3.  NOTE:  If you are using regular onion, use half of a small onion.  Dice finely, and caramelize before adding eggs to the pan.  They need extra time to get soft.

4.  Heat up your frying pan over medium heat and lightly grease the pan with cooking spray or vegetable oil.  Add the egg mixture to the pan, and swirl around the pan to distribute evenly.

5.  Cook until the egg sets.

6.  If using nori, lay the sheet of nori on top of the egg and allow to get warm.

7.  Going from left to right (or right to left, whichever is more comfortable for you) roll the egg over in one inch sections, like you're rolling a roll-up.  

8.  Remove from the heat, and cut into one inch pieces.  Serve as a side dish with other korean banchan dishes, or as part of a lunchbox as a main dish.

Kitchen Tips - Onion Storage

I cook for only two people - myself and Mr. Unoriginal Chef.  I used to buy onions individually, but it wasn't always easy to gauge how much I would need, and I wound up making trips to the grocery store to buy one thing, which was extremely wasteful.

I discovered onions were sold in three pound bags at the grocery store, and in a size that was consistent for a dinner for two!  We win!  They were also cheaper per pound, and I stored them in my cupboard.

Over the past month, I discovered my onions were starting to become moldy and rotten on the inside.  Ugh.  Talk about a waste.  I was storing my onions inside the mesh bag (good) inside a dark cupboard (good) inside the plastic bag (whoops.)  In my defense, I kept the onions inside the bag so that I wouldn't be left with a ridiculous onion mess at the bottom of my cupboard to clean up.  Unfortunately, that promoted rotting and molding coupled with how warm it has been recently.

A quick google search directed me to instructables.com and this helpful tip on how to store onions.  All you need is one paper bag.  It is a much more attractive option than taking stockings and hanging them on the wall in my kitchen.

Cut the bag down to above the fold, or as per one of the commenters, fold the bag down to the size you need.  I took this recommendation, as it made the bag sturdier and I could move the bag around easily if necessary.

Oh Trader Joe's - how I love thee.  I chose a Trader Joe's bag over a Whole Foods bag because it was smaller, meaning less folds!  (I'm lazy and not very strong.)

I transported the few onions I had remaining into their new home.

I kept the mesh netting... for now.  I bought a new bag of onions and while I kept the netting (to deal with my OCDness about onion skins all over the bottom of the bag) I broke the netting apart so that the onions have room to breathe at the bottom of the paper bag. 

As a side note, you may have noticed I have white onions.  My current bag o'onions are yellow.  In cooked recipes, there isn't much of a difference between white and yellow onions.  I prefer white because I think they're sweeter and not as sharp as yellow onions when eaten raw.  This would be an excellent point if I actually ate raw onions...

Anyways out of habit I kept picking up white onions, but the last time I was at the grocery store, the white onion bags had 1-2 onions that were either already moldy or soft (I'm that crazy lady in the store feeling up every onion in the bag) and the onion sizes were wildy inconsistent - one large onion, a few medium ones, and a couple of baby sized ones.  Ugh.  I grabbed a bag of yellow onions that seemed fresher, with consistent sized onions, and no rotting or molding visible on the outside. 

Today we learned:

1.  How to store onions (and it works for potatoes too!)

2.  My carpet is whiteish.

3.  My cupboards are really shallow, which I hate.