You pick the meat off the pork back bones in your bowl as you go, between spoonfuls of cloudy broth and napa greens soaked in doenjang seasoning. What decides the broth is pouring away the first blanching water, where the scum and porky smell collect.
Stale baguette soaks up the bean and vegetable broth until this is less a soup than something close to a porridge. The name means reboiled, and true to it, the soup tastes deeper when reheated the next day.
White fish firms up in about 4 minutes, and after that every stir breaks it apart. The radish cooks halfway first to flavor the broth, then the fish follows and is ladled out as soon as the flesh begins to flake.
Shrimp instead of beef makes this seaweed soup lighter, with a clearer taste of the sea. The seaweed and garlic go into sesame oil for two minutes, then the shrimp follow just until they turn pink, and the water goes in right away.
Store-bought frozen shrimp dumplings keep this one quick. Simmering the shrimp for about two minutes before the dumplings go in gives the clear broth some seafood flavor, and the dumplings keep their shape best added still frozen.
Beef leg bones simmer for more than six hours until the broth is as white as milk. It belongs with seolleongtang and gomtang, but no meat goes in. The same bones can be boiled again three or four times, each batch paler and cleaner-tasting than the last.
With the ox bone broth made ahead, the work here is in the napa outer leaves (ugeoji). Blanched leaves are rubbed through with doenjang, chili flakes, garlic and perilla oil, then stir-fried in the pot for three minutes to bring up the doenjang aroma before the broth goes in.
Each small hen is stuffed with soaked glutinous rice, fresh ginseng, jujubes, and garlic, and as it simmers the rice releases starch that gives the broth a soft, nutty body. Soak the rice at least 30 minutes so it cooks through inside the bird, and leave room for it to swell. A loose leg joint signals the hen is nearly there, but the thickest thigh meat and the rice in the cavity each need their own look. Salt is served on the side for dipping rather than added to the pot.
A salted salmon head and backbone with some flesh still attached give the kombu stock its fish oil and savor. Sanpei jiru is a Hokkaido winter soup, and unlike Ishikari nabe, which is seasoned with miso and uses fresh salmon, it relies on the salt already cured into the fish.
The mackerel's head and backbone go into the stock along with the fillets, and the clear broth still tastes strongly of fish. Pouring boiling water over the pieces and dunking them straight into cold water to pull off blood and scales is what keeps that broth clear. Each bowl gets a few drops of ginger juice, yuzu peel and two kinds of slivered onion.
Nanbu wheat crackers broken by hand into a soy-seasoned broth of chicken, burdock and vegetables soften at the edges as they drink up the liquid, while their centers stay chewy. In the Hachinohe area of Aomori, crackers have long gone into soup this way. Snack crackers tend to dissolve, and the ones sold for soup are used instead.
By tradition the broth reaches the table unseasoned, and salt and pepper are added by each person eating. Over 6 to 8 hours of simmering it turns from clear to milky, and the brisket, pulled out after about 2 hours, is sliced thin for the top. Rice or thin noodles go into the bowl with sliced green onion.
Once the doenjang-coated napa greens and bean sprouts have simmered and the broth has turned savory and cloudy, the large pieces of ox blood curd (seonji) are slid in at the edge of the pot. A deep stir with the ladle breaks them apart.
Each thin slice of beef is held with chopsticks and swished through gently simmering dashi for a few seconds. The name comes from the sound of that swishing. As the napa cabbage, tofu, shiitake and bok choy cook, their flavor builds up in the broth, which gets richer toward the end of the meal, and the last of it takes rice or udon.
Muroaji shokkara, a fermented mackerel scad sauce, handles both the salt and the savory depth in this soup on its own. The broth comes from small taro simmered until tender, with blanched ashitaba added at the end. Use a commercial shokkara with a clear production and storage history rather than fermenting fish at home.
Despite a name that means water-boiled fish, the bowl arrives under a layer of red chili oil. Thin slices of white fish, coated in starch, poach gently in a doubanjiang broth so they stay tender inside all that heat. Hot chili oil poured over Sichuan peppercorns at the end sizzles and releases the numbing aroma, and bean sprouts underneath catch the broth. It is intense enough that rice on the side is not optional.
Thin slices of radish simmer first to flavor the broth, because the clams and spinach themselves cook in moments. Turn the heat down as soon as the clams open and the meat stays tender.
Spinach brings a faint bitterness to the doenjang broth, and the wilted leaves leave it tinged a pale green.
Seasoned only with soup soy sauce, the broth stays clear and the grassy note of spinach comes through, a calm bowl to set next to oily or spicy dishes. Firm tofu cut into generous cubes holds together better as it simmers.
Filipino families often make this on rainy days and ladle the broth over rice. The sourness comes from tamarind paste, and if it tastes too mild, another tablespoon goes in. Tomato and onion, added in big pieces, melt into the broth over 30 minutes of simmering.
This royal court hot pot was once served in a special vessel with burning charcoal in its center; here an ordinary hot pot does the job. Meatballs of beef and tofu go in the middle, and shiitake, carrot and napa cabbage are arranged around them in separate sections. The egg never touches the broth. Yolk and white are fried into separate thin sheets, sliced, and laid on top in yellow and white strips.
Fat from the pork shoulder soaks into radish greens already rubbed with doenjang, and the broth turns heavy and reddish brown. It tastes deeper still after cooling once and reheating.
No meat goes into this one, only dried radish greens, doenjang and anchovy stock. Drying leaves the greens slightly bitter, and that bitterness stays in the pot on purpose. Strip it all out and the soup stops tasting like siraegi-guk.
The brisket is patted dry before it meets the perilla oil. Wet meat tastes boiled instead of toasty, and the radish greens then go into that same oil. That step is where the soup's nutty depth comes from.