05/22/2026
Over winter break, Yunji Yun (C’26) asked her mom to make a beloved childhood dish: sausage ketchup stir fry.
Her mom used to cook the stir fry in the months after they arrived in the U.S. from South Korea. Yun was 11 years old at the time, spoke no English and was hungry for a taste of home.
Ten years later, Yun’s mother made the dish exactly the way she remembered: Korean sausage and vegetables slathered in Korean ketchup and oyster sauce, served beside a lump of rice and egg curry.
“Despite our ups and downs, my mom’s hands remember me, what foods I like and how to make me feel 11 again, washing away homesickness and leaving me only with that feeling of comfort and home,” Yun wrote.
The recipe for sausage ketchup stir fry appears in Yun’s senior thesis, which isn’t a typical senior thesis but a 76-page food magazine that unpacks how Korean cookbooks illustrate the diversity of Korean American identity.
As part of her American Studies major, Yun spent nearly a year chronicling the rise of Korean food in the U.S. by poring through cookbooks, analyzing stories and recipes, and writing and designing the magazine. She even painted the cover, which, modeled after Bon Appétit magazine, features a bottle of American-made kimchi.
The process helped Yun understand her own Korean American identity — and gave her a deeper understanding of her grandmother and mother through their view of food.
Read more about Yun's stories of food and family: https://g.town/4dvYHUk
