124 recipes. Page 1 of 6
Traditional drinks and bar snack recipes
Thin coins of ginger and a cinnamon stick steep in steaming, not boiling, water for five minutes, until the liquid turns a light amber. The apple cider vinegar waits until the tea has cooled below 60°C, and honey is stirred in last. A pinch of gochugaru, Korean chili powder, adds a second kind of heat, different from the ginger's.
Apple cider vinegar loosened in cold sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon loses much of the sharpness it has straight from the bottle. Allulose or honey replaces sugar and is stirred into the vinegar and lemon base before the ice goes in. Lemon slices and apple mint go on top, and the glass is served while the bubbles last.
Unsweetened apple juice and water in equal parts make the base, and the vinegar's acidity lands on sourness from the same fruit. Ground cinnamon tends to clump and float, and a shaker breaks it up. Pour it over ice, or warm it just until it steams, never to a boil, for an aroma like apple pie.
Chunks of Asian pear simmer for a long time over low heat with bellflower root (doraji), ginger and jujubes, and the pear juice sweetens the tea with no sugar. The fresh doraji is peeled, then rubbed hard with salt and rinsed two or three times, which keeps a medicinal smell out of the tea. It is a warm drink for the season when the wind turns cold and the air dry, and leftovers can be chilled and poured over ice.
Syrup made from prickly pear cactus fruit turns the glass a deep magenta and brings a berry-like sweetness with an earthy edge. Plenty of lemon and grapefruit juice keeps it from tasting like straight syrup, and the sparkling water goes in last, poured down the side of the glass and stirred only once.
This is not a copy of Kooksoondang's Baekseju but a homemade rice wine of glutinous rice and Korean nuruk with fresh ginseng, jujubes and ginger. Whether fermentation is done is judged less by the day count than by the bubbling dropping off noticeably and the liquid separating into layers. Live yeast remains even in the strained wine and would ferment honey stirred into it, so honey goes only into each glass at serving.
Ginger and black peppercorns steep first and are strained out, and the pear poaches in that liquid, so the punch carries their warmth without a single peppercorn in the cup. Before any honey goes in, the sweetness comes from the pear itself. It can be drunk warm right away, but for a chilled holiday table it is made the day before and rested overnight in the fridge, with pine nuts floated on just before serving.
Boiled chestnuts are simmered again in milk and water, then blended into a warm drink that keeps the starchy taste of chestnut intact. The thin inner skin has to come off along with the shell, or it leaves an astringent taste. Maple syrup goes in as the base is reheated, cinnamon and vanilla at the very end, and the latte is frothed and poured before the chestnut solids sink.
Made at home with no flavoring or dye, banana milk comes out pale rather than the bright yellow of the bottled kind. Most of the sweetness depends on how ripe the bananas are, so ones with a few brown speckles work best. Blended with ice it drinks like a thick smoothie, while without ice it is thinner, closer to the bottled drink.
Misutgaru, a Korean powder of roasted mixed grains, is blended with ripe banana, so the sweetness of the fruit sits on top of a toasty, grainy base. A spoonful of peanut butter makes it nuttier, and blending in ice leaves it thick and cold.
Raw beet, apple and carrot are blended whole with water and drunk unstrained, pulp and all, which makes it thick. Apple and lemon cover much of the beet's earthy taste, which is why the honey goes in only after tasting, and only if needed.
Large cubes of beet and slices of ginger sit in salt brine with a splash of sauerkraut juice to start fermentation, and the result is a deep red drink that tastes salty first, then tart and faintly fizzy. Cutting the beets small or grating them speeds fermentation too much and clouds the liquid. Any fuzzy growth, pink, green, or black spots, or an unpleasant smell means the whole batch gets thrown out, untasted.
A few salt-pickled cherry blossoms floated on top leave a faint saltiness and a floral note at the end of this sweet milk tea. The blossoms soak in cold water for only five minutes to lose some salt; any longer and the scent goes too. Cream and vanilla bean paste added to the milk make it heavier than an everyday milk tea.
Dark brown sugar syrup run down the inside of the glass spreads into tiger stripes as the milk goes in. The syrup boils without stirring and stops once it thickens, because syrup cooked until hard will not blend into the milk. The pearls are not drained straight after boiling but left off the heat with the lid on for five minutes, which makes them chewy right to the center.
Sparkling water poured down the side of the glass settles over the deep purple black raspberry base in two layers. Frozen berries are tucked in among the ice cubes. Lime juice and honey are fully mixed into the concentrate before any soda goes in, or the sweetness all collects at the bottom.
Bokbunja, Korean black raspberries, are layered with sugar in a jar and covered with 35% infusing soju for about a month in a cool place. Regular low-proof soju is no substitute, and a strip of lemon peel and a cinnamon stick go in with the fruit. Once strained, the wine keeps aging in a fresh bottle, where its acidity softens. The water in the ingredient list never goes into the jar; it is an optional amount for diluting a glass at serving.
A green layer sits at the bottom of the glass with sparkling water above it. The base is barley sprout powder stirred into apple juice with lemon juice, and it is only lightly sweetened; the grassy barley taste comes through clearly.
Roasted barley carries the toasty flavor, while corn silk and halved jujubes add a soft sweetness in the background. Darker color is not the goal: longer boiling pulls bitterness from the barley, so the tea comes off the heat once it turns light brown and then rests covered to finish infusing.
Chamoe, the small yellow Korean melon, is blended with plain yogurt and milk into a cool, slightly tangy yellow smoothie. The seeds and the watery flesh around them are scraped out first, and the ice goes in only at the end, after the flavor is set, to keep the drink from thinning.
Picked in late summer before they ripen, cheonggyul (green Jeju tangerines) taste sharper and smell more strongly of peel than regular mandarins. The syrup in this ade is made from the fruit sliced skin and all and cured in sugar. Mint leaves are only pressed with the palm, since crushing them turns them bitter.
Dried kudzu root gives this tea an earthy, nutty base, with ginger bringing heat and cinnamon a warm spice on top. The jujubes are scored deeply so their sweetness actually reaches the water during the long, low simmer. Strained into a thermos, it stays warm for sipping through the day.
Cooked chestnuts make this cold shake thick enough to eat with a spoon, and dried jujubes give it a dense, fruity sweetness. Straight from the bag the jujubes do not break down well, so they soak in warm milk for about ten minutes until soft before going into the blender.
The jujubes simmer until soft and are pressed through a sieve so only their pulp goes back into the tea, which makes it thick rather than clear. Once the pulp is in, it catches on the bottom of the pot quickly and needs constant stirring over low heat. There is a little ginger in it, and each cup gets a few pine nuts on top.
Equal parts instant coffee, sugar and hot water are whipped into a caramel-colored foam that sits thickly on iced milk. The mixture is ready once it has gone from dark brown to pale and glossy and holds a peak; if it is still runny, the fix is another minute of whipping, not more water or sugar. Cocoa powder is dusted over the top, and the layers get stirred together just before drinking.