Kimchi Toast Is Our New Breakfast Classic

Let's get this out of the way first: Kimchi toast is not health food. “It’s definitely on the ish side of ‘healthyish’,” says senior food editor Andy Baraghani, who tried using yogurt as the creamy base for this kimchi toast before admitting that nothing but full-fat cream cheese would do. He was right: the kimchi cuts through the creaminess of the dairy with a zing of funk and brightness, making for a breakfast condiment that rivals any of the flavored cream cheeses in the deli case.

And not all is lost on the health front. Kimchi is a fermented food, full of good-for-you probiotics. Andy likes Sunja's kimchi, which he says has the right amount of gochugaru (red pepper flakes) and a pleasingly crunchy texture that’s never too soggy. If you have another favorite (or perhaps a homemade jar knocking around in your fridge), go ahead and use it.

This toast is excellent for an on-the-fly breakfast or midday snack, because the recipe is more “assembling” than “cooking.” It starts with good country-style bread, grilled if you have the patience and toasted if you don’t. It’ll be delicious either way, but make sure those slices are thick enough to support the toppings.

Once the toast situation is handled, it’s time to make the cream cheese mixture. Think of it as veggie cream cheese, only laced with funky kimchi and thus infinitely more interesting. Make sure your cream cheese is room temperature, then mix it with finely chopped kimchi in a medium bowl until a smooth spread forms. This kimchi-cream cheese mixture can hang out in the fridge for a couple days, but it'll get more and more potent over time.

The herb salad on top is a classic Baraghani move. Toss thinly sliced scallions and tender-stemmed cilantro leaves with lime juice and salt, then spread the kimchi cream cheese on the toasted bread, top with a generous heap of herb salad, and finish with a drizzle of chile oil if you have it and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. The tangle of herbs and seeds is pretty, but it also keeps the dish balanced. “It would have been pretty one-note if it was just the cream cheese and kimchi—delicious, but a little too heavy—and I needed something that would bring it back to life," says Baraghani.

Once assembled, this toast is more than the sum of its parts. It hits high on the creamy-tangy-crunchy matrix, and the herb salad makes it feel fancier than a five-minute toast deserves to be. It’s a great brunch addition or impromptu snack, and we suspect it would make for an excellent hangover cure. Not that we've ever had one of those.

Get the recipe:

Kimchi Toast