Korean Paleo: 80 Bold-Flavored, Gluten-and-Grain-Free Recipes

Choi, a nutritional therapist and founder of the What Great Grandma Ate blog, shares flavorful and creative Korean paleo recipes. Korean food, she writes, is rich with fresh vegetables and meats, and relies on traditional preservation methods like pickling—all of which translates easily to the protein-heavy, low-carb paleo diet with just a few tweaks. Hers are straightforward, traditional dishes: bulgogi, galbi (barbecued short ribs), bibimbap, japchae (stir-fried sweet potato noodles), spicy barbecue pork, and bossam—boiled pork belly wrapped in cabbage and topped with kimchi. Choi calls for a few low-carb substitutions, such as cauliflower sticky rice to serve with doenjang-beef stew and using cassava flour and tapioca starch for making dumpling wrappers for a mandu guk soup. Home cooks will eagerly dig into sweet and spicy shrimp and ginseng chicken soup, and will likely find the labor-intensive spicy Korean ramen with spiralized sweet potatoes (acting as stand-ins for the typical noodles) to be worth the effort. Choi’s crispy zucchini pancakes, meanwhile, are a terrific way to include veggies for kids. Choi advises keeping on hand homemade doenjang, gochujang (chili paste), and kimchi, but most recipes come together fairly quickly once the prep is done. This is a terrific and flavorful addition to the ever-expanding paleo/Whole30 library. (Dec.)