A whole chicken takes the place of beef bones in this gomtang, and 20 g of ginger leaves a peppery edge on the clear, pale-yellow broth. Push the ginger much past that and it starts to taste bitter.
Soybeans soaked for a full night and day, simmered until their raw beany smell is gone and ground into a smooth paste called go, give this Fukui miso soup its body and a gentle nuttiness, and a soft foam rises as it heats. In Fukui it is still served as temple food at Hoonko, the major Jodo Shinshu observance around the anniversary of Shinran's death, known locally as Honko-san.
Eelpout is so soft that a spoon breaks it apart, and the pot is gently shaken rather than stirred while it simmers. Gelatin from the fish gives the clear broth a slight body. On the east coast of Gangwon and North Gyeongsang it is a winter dish, served at harbor restaurants in earthenware bowls.
Brisket goes into the pot with the ox bones for five to six hours, and that makes gomtang meatier than seolleongtang, a soup built mostly on bone. The broth is left unseasoned; salt and pepper come to the table separately.
Gochujang, chili flakes and soy sauce dissolve into beef bone broth, turning the pot red and heavy. Napa cabbage, onion and oyster mushrooms line the bottom with the intestine and tripe piled on top, and as the vegetables soften underneath they sweeten the broth.
Only chili flakes and soup soy sauce season the beef bone broth in this Seoul version, with no gochujang, so it turns red yet stays clear and sharp. The intestines simmer alone for about 12 minutes to release their rich, fatty filling before cabbage, onion, and oyster mushrooms go in and soak it up. The style traces back to the gopchang alleys of Euljiro and Majang-dong in Seoul, and a pot like this is usually shared over soju, with perilla leaves added at the end for fragrance.
When there is soaked gosari (bracken fern) left over from making holiday namul, it gets fried with beef in sesame oil and turned into a doenjang soup. The bracken keeps its chew even after a long simmer, which makes it a sturdy thing to find in a bowl of soup.
With oysters and big cubes of tofu in a clear kelp broth, the salt from the oysters seasons the soup more than you might expect. So the salt goes in only after the oysters, a taste at a time.
The broth gets its base from radish, cooked until translucent before the oysters go in. That is why the radish is sliced an even 0.3 cm thin, and no tofu or separate stock is used.
This is Korea's birthday seaweed soup made with oysters in place of beef. Between November and January, when oysters are fattest, the broth takes on the most of their creamy sweetness.
Garlic and chili flakes, given 30 seconds in sesame oil, turn the broth a deep red, and in it large spoonfuls of soft tofu wobble alongside plump oysters.
A roux of equal parts flour and oil, stirred until it nears the color of chocolate, gives this Louisiana stew its dark color and toasty flavor. The roux can darken suddenly near the end; at the first bitter smell the heat has to come down, because a scorched roux leaves its bitterness in the whole pot. Sliced okra simmers for 40 minutes with smoked sausage and lends the broth a light body, and the gumbo is spooned over white rice.
Pour in the egg, leave it for 30 seconds, then give one wide stir, and it opens into broad, petal-like pieces. From prep to table it takes about ten minutes.
When the drinking table runs short of snacks, this soup is ready almost as soon as the water boils. Pour the egg in along a chopstick while the broth is only gently bubbling, and it spreads out into fine threads.
Pork spine bones simmer for about two hours into a cloudy, rich stock, then blanched cabbage greens (ugeoji) rubbed with doenjang and chili join the pot for an earthy, spicy depth. Cubes of seonji, congealed blood, are added near the end and warmed by ladling broth over them rather than stirring, so they hold their shape.
Hard scorched rice dropped into hot seafood broth starts out crisp, turns chewy, and if left a while longer softens into something like porridge. It goes into each bowl at the table rather than into the pot, and how long you wait decides which version you eat.
With no chili paste or doenjang, only salt, garlic and scallion, the broth tastes of nothing but the clams, shrimp and squid. Each bowl holds open clam shells, curled red shrimp and white rings of squid.
Blue crabs go in shell and all, turning red as they cook and flavoring the radish broth, and with cheongyang chilies for heat the pot goes in the middle of the table for everyone to dip into.
A whole chicken simmers for over an hour, until the broth turns milky, before the abalone, small octopus and shrimp go in. Adding the abalone guts makes the broth deeper still; whether to include them is up to the cook.
Goat meat, called hija in Okinawa, simmers for about three hours into a clear broth that keeps the animal's strong aroma. When refrigeration was scarce, slaughtering a goat meant sharing the meat across the community and cooking one large pot, and the soup became part of celebrations. Fuchiba, the local mugwort, is added briefly at the end. Rather than seasoning the whole pot heavily, each bowl comes with grated ginger and salt on the side so every diner can tame the goat aroma and set the saltiness.
Diced skin-on sweet potato stays in pieces, while raw sweet potato grated in at the end melts into the broth, giving mild sweetness and a rustic body. Hikado is a Nagasaki winter soup, and its name is linked to the Portuguese picado, meaning finely chopped; it is said to have grown out of a stew that arrived through contact with the West and was remade with local fish and vegetables. No flour slurry is used, and with yellowtail and chicken in the same pot, fish and meat flavors overlap.
Cut into 0.7 cm half-moons and cooked only briefly, the zucchini keeps its shape in the clear broth and a little firmness at the center. The shrimp, added first, flavor the broth; dried shrimp make it deeper.
You eat this holding a big bone in your hand and gnawing off the meat around it. It is said to have started with hunters in the Okukuma area of Kumamoto, who ate every scrap of meat left on the bones after butchering game. These days it is made with meaty pork ribs and backbone rather than wild boar, cooked in big pots and shared at local gatherings.
Hair-fine strands of maesaengi seaweed spread green through the whole broth, with pieces of mussel to chew on in between. Both are winter ingredients from Korea's south coast, at their best from November to February. Oysters can take the mussels' place.