In June of 2023, my husband and I traveled to Seoul, South Korea. I wrote about our visit some in my post called Sweet Potato Noodles, a delicious Korean beef and noodle dish; that post includes some stunning city photos.

One day we ventured north to visit Jingwansa Temple, a monastery run by women monks. It’s a 12th Century Buddhist Temple in the Bukhansan Mountains. We were honored to get a tour from the one of the many head-shaved monks, who happened to speak English perfectly. After the tour we watched a cooking demonstration.

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This was followed by lunch that included 18 incredible vegan dishes. The bowls were on a lazy Susan, and you used chopsticks to pick from the bowls, which included vegetables, roots, tofu, leaves, and much more. Interestingly enough, no garlic, leeks, or onions are included in their diet; these encourage lust, and we don’t want that.

One of the dishes I enjoyed was marinated shiso leaves. They’re beautiful leaves – a relative of mint. I bought seeds from Amazon, of course, and crossed my fingers. Months later, I’m still regularly pruning the giant schiso “bush.”

There’s more than you could possible want to know about shiso, also called perilla, in this article by John Ash at The Press Democrat, including other recipes using the leaves.

Raw shiso leaves can be tossed into salads or used wherever you might add savory green herbs. Or they can be cooked like tender spinach — steamed, sautéed, tempura’d, or deep fried. Often, the leaves are rolled into sushi. The recipe I used, surprisingly enough, is from Saveur.com.

To eat, using chopsticks, rice is tucked into the leaf with all of the good marinade flavors, and eaten in one simple and delicious bite.

Marinated Shiso

1/2 cup soy sauce
2 Tablespoons minced scallions
1 Tablespoons gochugaru (Korean chile flakes)
1 Tablespoon minced fresh green chile (I used Serrano chile peppers)
1 Tablespoon honey
3 cloves garlic, minced
30 perilla leaves
Toasted sesame seeds, for garnish
Shilgochu (Korean shredded red pepper threads), for garnish
Steamed white rice, for serving

First rinse and dry the shiso leaves.

In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, scallions, gochugaru, chile, honey, and garlic; stir well to dissolve the honey.

In a medium, flat-bottomed container, add 1 tablespoon of the marinade, spreading it around to coat the bottom. Add a perilla leaf, then drizzle 1 tablespoon of marinade evenly over the leaf. Place another leaf over the first, followed by another tablespoon of marinade. Continue neatly stacking the leaves, layered with marinade, until the marinade runs out.

Then tip the container to reuse the marinade that has accumulated in the bottom of the dish (the leaves do not need to be completely submerged, but each layer should be moistened). When you place the final leaf on the stack, drizzle with 3 tablespoons of marinade. Cover the dish with a tight-fitting lid or plastic wrap, then refrigerate at least overnight or up to 1 week.

To serve, uncover the leaves and sprinkle with sesame seeds and a pinch of shilgochu if using. Serve chilled, with warm white rice.

Below, gochugaru on the left, shilgochu on the right.

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