Half-dried pollock, kodari, is chewier than fresh pollock and much less fishy. It soaks in cold water for 10 minutes, both sides are seared plain, and only then does the soy, gochujang and syrup glaze go on, a thin coat at every turn.
Cut thin across the bones, each strip of LA galbi carries a row of small bone sections. It goes into a pear juice and soy marinade, and given a night in the fridge, the seasoning reaches the meat between the bones.
Frenched lamb chops come with a clean bone that works as a handle, so they are picked up and eaten by hand. A rub of rosemary and crushed garlic softens the gamey edge of the lamb, and the chops come off the heat at medium rare, still pink inside.
Sukiyaki-thin slices of sirloin hit a very hot griddle for about 30 seconds, then a lemon soy sauce with grated onion and garlic is poured in around them. Being so thin, the meat soaks up the sauce and its own juices almost at once. In Sasebo, the leftover sauce and juices are stirred into rice once the meat is gone.
Seasoned with doenjang instead of gochujang, this pork neck tastes savory and fermented rather than hot or sweet. The basting portion of the marinade is set aside before any of it touches raw meat. At 1.5 cm thick, the slices can look browned well before the center is done, and a thermometer makes the final call.
Pork makchang is boiled once before cleaning and blanched for another 7 minutes after. The gochujang marinade works into its wrinkled surface, and slow cooking over medium heat turns it into a sticky brown glaze. The blanching does not finish the cooking; the thick parts stay on until they pass 71°C, and then it is snipped with scissors and served with perilla leaves or shredded green onion.
Garlic scapes stay tough if they go into the pan raw. So they spend just 30 seconds in boiling water, get rinsed in cold water right away, and then cook with the gochujang sauce in a pan for about 3 minutes. Done, they bend easily but still snap when you bite.
Boso Peninsula fishermen in Chiba used to carry namerou, mackerel chopped fine with miso, up into the hills in abalone shells and grill or steam it there, and sangayaki grew out of that habit. The fish and miso are chopped together until the paste is sticky enough to lift as one mass, then mixed with ginger, onion and green pepper. Each shell is topped with a shiso leaf and grilled until the mound puffs and turns opaque all the way through. It goes with rice or with drinks.
Minuh, a Korean brown croaker, has enough savory depth that coarse salt and white pepper are all it needs. With a whisper of flour and left undisturbed skin side down, the skin crisps lightly. It is at its best in July and August, but frozen fillets grill up the same way.
Coconut milk and palm sugar in the marinade caramelize on the grill, giving the pork neck dark, sticky edges. The meat is sliced thin and folded three times onto each skewer, with small gaps between the pieces letting heat reach the thickest fold quickly.
Minced garlic warms in olive oil over low heat until it turns pale gold, and only then does the heat go up for the boiled octopus. Three to four minutes in the pan browns the edges while the pieces stay springy. Paprika powder in place of the chili flakes makes a milder version.
The octopus is already cooked, so all the pan has to do is reduce the gochujang sauce onto it. Over high heat, it is done the moment the sauce darkens at the edges and turns glossy.
Three mushrooms, king oyster, shiitake and oyster, are cut to roughly the same size and cooked in one pan. They hold a lot of water, and turning them too early steams them instead of browning, so wait until the underside is golden and flip only once.
Three ingredients make this: salted pollock roe, butter and parsley. The roe goes into butter melted over low heat in a small pan and is left alone for the first two minutes, then rolled and basted once the underside sets pale gold. Its membrane is thin and splits easily if the heat climbs. Chopped parsley goes over the top on the plate.
Coated thinly in gochujang and syrup, small octopus needs only a minute and a half on a grill rack or pan, two minutes at most. Snipped into bites with scissors, it goes into perilla or lettuce wraps or over a bowl of rice.
Halved eggplant gets a thin layer of sweet miso glaze on its cut face and only a brief turn under the grill. The flesh underneath is soft enough to scoop with a spoon, and the glaze on top bubbles and picks up small brown spots. Eggplant drinks oil quickly, so be generous with it in the first cooking.
Broad, thin sheets of sirloin cut across the grain give this neobiani a tender bite, and the beef stays in whole slices instead of being minced into patties. Grated onion and sugar in the soy marinade brown fast and scorch before the beef does, so the slices are laid in one layer without the leftover marinade.
Dried nogari pollock is toasted in butter over medium-low heat for about three minutes a side and served with a dip of gochujang and mayonnaise sharpened with a little lemon juice and sugar. Pieces too hard to cut get twenty seconds in the microwave first. Because it stiffens again as it cools, it goes out warm.
The skin of the sea bass fillets is dried twice: once while trimming, and again five minutes after the coarse salt and pepper go on, when fresh moisture has come up. The frying oil is olive oil warmed over low heat with crushed garlic and thyme, and after the flip it gets spooned over the flesh.
Squid beaks in butter take so little time that another plate can go out in the middle of a drinking session. They are tossed with garlic in butter over high heat for about three minutes, then soy sauce and mirin are cooked down onto them.
Sliced into rounds after grilling, each piece of this stuffed squid shows rings in cross section: chewy squid outside, sticky glutinous rice, then soft tofu. Soaked rice swells as it cooks, so the tubes are filled only 70 to 80 percent. Packed full, they split on the grill.
Okdom, the tilefish most associated with Jeju, is grilled whole and seasoned with nothing more than coarse salt and pepper. The flesh is firm and flavorful enough on its own; even the ginger juice is brushed on only thinly, just to deal with any fishiness.
Honey and soy sauce cook down into a dark, glossy glaze on this duck breast, while the cold-pan start renders enough fat from under the skin that no oil is added. The portion of marinade for the final brushing is set aside before any raw duck touches it.
Duck breast rubbed with rosemary, thyme, garlic and olive oil is pan-roasted, then glazed in its last minute with soy sauce and pear juice. After a five-minute rest it is sliced thin against the grain, showing pink meat under the herb-scented skin.