Beef brisket is browned in sesame oil, then water and napa cabbage go in. Guk-ganjang, the Korean soy sauce for soups, turns the broth a clear light brown, and a thin film of sesame oil from the beef floats on top with a nutty smell. The stems go in before the leaves; the stems keep a little bite while the leaves turn soft and full of broth.
Thick-cut button mushrooms get 10 minutes in the pot, long enough to chew almost like meat, while the enoki join only for the last 3 minutes and barely wilt.
Napa cabbage, oyster mushrooms and bok choy alternate around the rim of the pot, with the beef spread flat in the center, and the whole thing cooks at the table. The vegetables release water as they go, and the broth starts out lightly seasoned to allow for it.
Seasoned with soup soy sauce, the clear brown broth doubles as the base for tteokguk, rice cake soup. The radish should simmer until a spoon slides through it easily; only then does its sharp bite give way to sweetness.
The broth starts from brisket browned in sesame oil, yet the sprouts keep it from feeling heavy. Cooked too long, mung bean sprouts give off a raw smell. The heat goes off while their heads still snap.
Bone-in pork ribs simmer quietly with knotted kombu and shiitake for about an hour and a half, until the meat slips off the bone and the broth is still clear. The soup comes from Okinawa's habit of using every part of the pig and remains an important New Year dish. Each bowl also gets a softened kombu knot alongside the ribs.
The oxtail soaks in cold water for an hour, gets a quick blanch, and then simmers over low heat for three hours. Left to cool overnight, the broth sets a layer of fat on top that lifts off easily, and the soup is lighter for it. Kkakdugi, cubed radish kimchi, goes on the table with it.
Thinly sliced garlic warmed slowly in olive oil until pale gold sets the flavor of the pot. Pushed further, it turns bitter and the whole pot tastes of it. Day-old baguette soaks up the chicken stock and partly dissolves, thickening the broth without flour, while smoked paprika tints it red and adds a faint smoky note. Beaten egg poured in a thin stream sets into soft ribbons rather than curds.
Instead of the offal and many garnishes found in fuller versions of this Jakarta soup, this home recipe makes its beef broth from brisket, coconut milk and a ground paste of onion, garlic and ginger cooked in oil. The milky color comes from the coconut milk added at the end, with no need to wait for a cloudy stock. Brisket is the slow part, and a cooked-looking surface says little; a fork should slide easily into the center. Rice is served on the side.
One ink sac, loosened in two ladles of broth, turns the miso soup nearly black. In Amami, Kagoshima, bigfin reef squid is called mizuika and its ink sac mada. These large, translucent squid are caught in Amami's waters all year.
Young mugwort gives a doenjang broth a fresh, green spring aroma, but that aroma fades quickly with heat. The clam meat is cooked through first, so the leaves can be added last over low heat and ladled out the moment they wilt to a bright green.
A Sichuan fish soup that gets its sourness from rinsed pickled mustard greens and its heat from dried chilies and chili oil. Thin slices of white fish, lightly coated in starch, turn silky and soft in the red broth.
Gunma suiton dough is never rolled or cut. A loose flour batter is simply spooned into dashi already simmering with daikon, carrot, taro, shiitake and fried tofu, and that ease made it an everyday dish that stood in for rice when rice ran short.
Salted shrimp and chili flakes stay out of the pot and go on the table, and each person sets the salt and heat. The boiled pork goes into the bone broth first to flavor it; the sundae follows and only warms through over low heat, which keeps the casings from splitting.
Half a spoonful of doenjang in the chili paste keeps the heat from turning sharp. The sundae sits on cabbage and onion and simmers at the table; the broth grows stronger as it reduces, and the flame comes down as you eat, with the perilla leaves added last.
The same soft tofu as in sundubu-jjigae goes in here, but with no chili flakes or chili paste the broth stays clear. Big spoonfuls of tofu are slipped in and left unstirred, and the heating stops once they tremble on a spoon.
Leaving a little of the purple skin on the turnip gives the doenjang broth a soft tint. Turnip is more delicately sweet than Korean radish, with a faint peppery edge, and the soup tastes different from a radish version because of it. Turnips are in season from autumn into early winter.
Coarsely grated daikon and overnight-dried sardines simmer together, and a splash of rice vinegar at the end turns the pot into a hot, tangy soup. In the Miyazaki dialect shui means soup, and unlike chilled vinegared salads this one is eaten steaming, traditionally alongside mochi.
Eggs are whipped for 4 to 5 minutes into a creamy foam, poured into boiling broth, and left covered off the heat until the foam puffs into a soft dome and sets. Records put the dish on breakfast trays at the Fukuroi post station in the Edo period, and the Fukuroi tourism association revived it from those old documents.
Everything left after filleting a cod, from the head, backbone and skin to the liver, roe or milt, goes into one big pot here. Jappa means scraps in the Tsugaru dialect of Aomori, yet these parts make a full-bodied winter miso soup. Liver mashed into the broth near the end gives it a soft richness, and fresh milt is treated as a prize. In Tsugaru cod was the fish for welcoming the New Year; families bought a whole large one at year's end and dragged it home over snowy roads, which gave rise to the phrase tara shogatsu, cod New Year.
In inland Yamagata, families and friends gather on riverbanks in autumn to share huge pots of this taro and beef stew at imoni-kai parties. The beef waits until a skewer slides easily into the taro. Added at the start, it toughens and throws off more foam.
The papaya has to be green and firm, not the ripe fruit, and it is added only after the chicken has simmered, so it softens to fork-tender while keeping its shape. Plenty of julienned ginger, fried first with garlic and onion, gives tinola's clear broth a clean, sharp heat.
Galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves steep in coconut milk alone, with no water or stock. Coconut milk splits if it boils hard, and the pot is kept at the barest simmer with only small bubbles at the edge. The woody galangal and lemongrass can be fished out before serving.
Sour, spicy, and salty all hit at once in this shrimp soup. The base is chicken stock briefly steeped with lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves, kept at a moderate simmer so it stays clear, and Thai chili paste turns it red. Shrimp need only a minute or two; once they curl and turn pink they are done, and longer cooking costs them their springy bite. Lime juice is stirred in after the heat is off, since boiling dulls its aroma.