Most of the work in this spicy beef offal soup happens before cooking: the mixed tripe is scrubbed with salt and flour into every fold, then soaked in cold water to draw out blood and odor. After a quick blanch the first water is thrown out, and a 50-minute simmer in fresh water softens the thick pieces while building the stock.
Clams and shepherd's purse both tend to carry grit. Purge the clams well in salted water and rub the dirt from between the naengi roots by hand, or the clear broth ends up with sand in every spoonful.
Dried pollack, a winter pantry staple, meets the first shepherd's purse dug up in spring. The pollack strips are not soaked, only rinsed of dust and toasted in sesame oil, because a long soak would leave their savoriness behind in the water.
The roots of shepherd's purse carry an earthy, mineral smell and the leaves a mild bitterness. Cutting both and mixing them evenly before cooking spreads each flavor through the pot. Pressing the doenjang through a sieve keeps the anchovy stock clear while still giving it fermented depth.
There is a spoonful of doenjang, but only as a base seasoning, and this tastes more like a clear beef soup made with brisket browned in sesame oil than a doenjang soup. Spring shepherd's purse brings an earthy green scent into the meaty broth.
Not every gomtang is milky. This Naju gomtang uses no bones, only lean brisket and shank simmered over low heat for more than two hours, which keeps the broth clear; turn up the heat and it clouds quickly. The cooked beef is shredded or thinly sliced and reheated in the broth before serving.
Strips of pork stomach and intestine fill the bowl, yet the broth tastes light and clear, led by bonito and mild pork rather than any offal smell. That clarity comes from bringing the offal to a boil in fresh water and discarding the cloudy liquid again and again, then simmering it for about 2 hours until tender. Salt and a touch of soy sauce season the broth without darkening it, and hihatsu, Okinawan long pepper, finishes each bowl. Once reserved for New Year, celebrations and memorial gatherings, it is now an everyday soup as well.
A curled tentacle and a white surface do not prove the thickest part of the octopus is cooked. Instead of a fixed time, this recipe relies on a thermometer and keeps the pot going until the center has held at 75°C or more for over a minute.
Whole loaches are boiled until the bones soften, ground, and pushed through a sieve, and the resulting broth clings heavily to the spoon. Radish greens tossed in doenjang and some perilla powder go in too, and ground sancho pepper is sprinkled on a little at a time just before eating.
Seven hundred grams of clams, a spoonful of rice wine and water make up nearly the whole pot. Once the shells start opening the soup is minutes from done, and the chilies, green onion and garlic should all be cut before the heat goes on.
Natto is ground in a mortar until no whole beans are left, then stirred into miso soup, and the broth turns softly thick with the fermented aroma spread evenly through it. It is a Yamagata winter home dish from a season when fresh food was scarce, made with stored foods like dried taro stems (imogara) and salted mountain vegetables. In some areas it was also served at New Year, for Nanakusa, or at Daikoku-sama observances.
The water used to soak the dried neungi mushrooms is not poured away; it becomes part of the hot pot broth. So much of the aroma has already moved into that water that the broth smells deeply of mushroom without any meat at all.
The neungi mushrooms join the pot only for the final 15 minutes, after the chicken has spent 50 minutes making its stock. Boiled from the start, they would lose their aroma and leave something close to an ordinary chicken soup.
Hot soy-seasoned broth with matchstick tofu goes into each bowl, then gets a ladle of raw grated nagaimo yam loosened with daikon juice, which spreads softly over the surface. This is the formal nuppei style from Iwate's Buddhist cooking, rather than the hachihai variation that thickens the whole pot with potato starch. The name hachihai is linked either to making eight bowls from one block of tofu or to wanting many refills. Gloves help when grating the nagaimo, which can irritate skin, and the topping goes on just before eating.
On a hot day this takes the soup's place on the Korean table. Thin cucumber slices sit in a sharp broth where vinegar leads, and ice goes in right before serving so it arrives very cold.
The radish simmers alone for more than 8 minutes to sweeten the broth, and the squid goes in afterwards for only 4 to 5. The rings are right when they turn opaque and begin to curl; any longer and they toughen fast. No chili flakes go in.
Beef and carrot browned in lard give this clear Okinawan soup a quiet richness beneath its bonito broth. On the islands, winter versions used chidekuni, a long, bright yellow island carrot, and heartier pots added beef offal. It has also long been cooked for local observances. Here a single block of lean beef round keeps the prep simple.
Olgaengi is what people in Chungcheong Province call the small freshwater snails known elsewhere in Korea as daseulgi. Their tiny meat cooks with mallow leaves in a doenjang broth, and a spoonful of ground perilla seed leaves it slightly thick.
A 1.5 kg duck is stuffed with soaked glutinous rice and simmered in water already steeped with a Korean herbal pack of astragalus and eumnamu. By the end the rice inside has turned to porridge, served together with the meat. Duck is tougher than chicken and needs more than an hour and a half.
Eight tablespoons of ground perilla seed turn this duck broth milky and thick, provided they are stirred in after the duck is fully cooked; added too early, the powder turns gritty with a bitter finish. Plain raw duck slices, not smoked or marinated, keep the broth tasting only of duck and radish.
With no potatoes or flour, this stew is thinner than a chowder, and the oysters taste clearly of themselves against the milk and cream. Their strained liquor goes into the pot too, carrying the briny flavor through the broth. A curled edge is not enough to call them done. They stay on the heat until opaque all the way through, and butter melted in off the heat finishes the bowl.
Green laver needs only 30 seconds to a minute in the pot; any longer and both its sea aroma and its bright green fade. That is why the anchovy stock and tofu are fully heated first and the laver goes in at the very end.
One pot yields two courses. The clear broth goes into bowls on its own, while thick slices of brisket with the potatoes and carrots share a plate, with mustard or coarse salt alongside. For a clear broth the first blanching water is thrown out, and the fresh pot is skimmed before it boils and kept at a bare shiver for two hours.
Sweating the leeks and onion in butter over low heat for about six minutes, glossy but never browned, is what keeps this soup mild. The body comes from puréed potato, and once chilled, the finished soup can be served like a vichyssoise.