Gim-gui

Thin sheets of seaweed brushed with sesame oil and salt, roasted until crisp and fragrant.

Gim-gui — roasted and seasoned seaweed — may be the simplest banchan in the Korean repertoire, requiring little more than a sheet of dried laver, a brush of sesame oil, a pinch of salt, and a moment over a flame, yet it delivers an irreplaceable toasty, oceanic crunch that no other banchan replicates. The transformation that heat works on dried seaweed is remarkable: dull, flat sheets of gim become crackling, iridescent, deep-green tiles that shatter on the tongue and release a wave of umami richness perfumed with sesame. Gim is one of the first solid foods given to Korean babies when transitioning from milk, and it remains a comfort food for all ages — wrapped around a bite of rice, folded and eaten as a portable snack, or crushed over bibimbap as a seasoning. Korea has cultivated and eaten seaweed for over a thousand years, and the country's southern and western coastal waters produce gim that is exported worldwide. The arrival of packaged, pre-roasted gim as a global snack food in recent decades has introduced this Korean staple to millions who would never previously have encountered it.