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Best Gim (food) in San Francisco

Dried seaweed sheets that wrap rice, meat, and vegetables—or crisp into shatters with sesame oil.

Gim (food)

What the real thing tastes like

Gim (Korean: 김), also romanized as kim, is a generic term for a group of edible seaweeds dried to be used as an ingredient in Korean cuisine, consisting of various species in the genera Pyropia and Porphyra, including P. tenera, P. yezoensis, P. suborbiculata, P. pseudolinearis, P. dentata, and P. seriata. Along with miyeok and dasima, gim is one of the most widely cultivated and consumed types of seaweed in Korea. The dried sheets of gim are often rolled to wrap and be eaten with rice. Gimbap is a dish in which gim is not only rolled with rice, but also meat, fish, or vegetables. Gim also can be eaten without rice by roasting with sesame oil or frying and cutting it to make side dishes (banchan) such as bugak. Due to the growing popularity of Korea Gim, it now accounts for approximately 70% of the global dried seaweed market. Major export markets include the United States, Japan, and China.

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Gim is the delicate, paper-thin seaweed sheet that anchors Korean tables—dried and crisp, it wraps rice and fillings in gimbap or stands alone, roasted with sesame oil until it shatters between your teeth. Born from several Pyropia species cultivated across Korea's waters, this everyday ingredient has quietly become the world's dominant dried seaweed, commanding 70% of the global market.

Order it here when it has

  • widely cultivated and consumed
  • versatile across dishes
  • dominant global market presence

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