Gimmari (Fried Seaweed Rolls with Glass Noodles)

Variations

• With tteokbokki: Korean Wikipedia notes it is also eaten with tteokbokki sauce. At a bunsik stall they are usually dunked in the tteokbokki pot, and the batter softens as it drinks the sauce; dip them separately to keep them crisp.
• With leftover japchae: the filling is made the way japchae is, so japchae with its vegetables and meat can be rolled and fried as it is. The vegetables carry water, so drain and cool it more thoroughly.
• Pan-fried, no batter: rolled around an oiled frying pan, they come out with the gim bare. The gim then takes the heat directly, so keep it lower.
• About the photograph: three rolls from a snack stall. The batter is thin and uneven, so the gim shows through it, and the noodles are visible at the ends.

Tips

• The order is the reverse of other glass-noodle fillings. Sundae fills with soaked noodles and warns "The noodles need room to swell into." Chả giò squeezes its soaked noodles hard: "Half the job is getting water out of the filling." Both plan around the water in the noodles: sundae leaves room for them to swell, chả giò wrings out what would turn to steam. Gimmari gets that over with first. As jjimdak says, japchae "boils its dangmyeon first and then stir-fries it in soy and sugar to take the seasoning up." — and gimmari's filling is made the same way. The noodles have swollen all they are going to, so the roll can be packed tight without bursting.
• Roll them cold: the noodles have to set. Japchae says of the sweet potato starch noodle that "a starch high in it does not go soft as it cools" — it sets firm and springy instead (cooking noodles). A handful of cool noodles holds together without turning to mush, each strand springing back, and so it keeps its log shape inside the gim.
• The gim is the weak link. Gimbap puts it plainly: "Nori is a thin polysaccharide sheet and it goes limp quickly on contact with water." And on temperature: "Too hot and the steam softens the gim and the oil sits on the surface". So drain the noodles, season them while hot, and roll only once they are cool.
• The batter takes the heat for the gim. It is what bugak says of a perilla leaf: "The rice paste takes the heat first and puffs around it, which is how something as thin as a perilla leaf comes out whole." Here the film is the batter. Dust the rolls lightly with flour first so it clings.
• Barely stir the batter. Flour cut with starch and mixed with cold water in a few strokes develops less gluten and fries crisper (deep-frying).
• Seam down. Lower each roll into the oil seam side first, so the edge of the gim does not open in the fat (wrapping and sealing).