손맛 — the taste
of one's hands.
A small Korean recipe archive made in Basel. Every dish boiled down to a ratio you can hold in your head.
Why this exists
Korean recipes online tend to be either pristine restaurant versions or chaotic transcripts of someone's grandmother. Both have their charm. Neither sticks in your head after the third dish.
This site is the in-between. Every recipe here started somewhere — a Maangchi video, a YouTuber I follow, a cookbook from my mother — and got rewritten into a pattern I could memorize. Bulgogi became 4-2-2-1. Doenjang jjigae became three-step layering. Once the ratio is in your head, the recipe disappears, and you're just cooking.
The Basel angle
I cook in Switzerland, not Seoul. That changes things. Some ingredients I can find at Coop or Migros — others I have to walk to Yumi Hana or New Asia for. Every recipe lists where I'd buy each ingredient, so you're not standing in a supermarket aisle wondering whether "soybean paste" means the same thing as doenjang. (It does. But you'd never know from the label.)
Where to shop in Basel
Yumi Hana
The shop for everything Korean — gochujang, doenjang, gochugaru, Korean rice cakes, perilla leaves. Worth the trip.
New Asia
Wider pan-Asian selection — go-to for tofu, garlic chives (부추), enoki, dried mushrooms, sesame oil, and Asian vegetables. Backup for anything Yumi Hana doesn't carry.
Coop
Beef cuts, pears, fresh produce, occasionally short-grain rice. The default for anything non-specialty.
Migros
Garlic, spring onion, lettuce wraps, basic soy sauce in a pinch. Closest to most homes.
How recipes get made here
Most start as a YouTube link from a chef I trust. The transcript gets pulled, cleaned, and condensed. The ratio gets isolated and named. Then it sits in a draft folder until I cook it — usually three or four times — before it goes live. If it's not memorable by the third cook, it doesn't get published.
— Minjee · Basel · 2026