189 recipes. Page 3 of 8
Hearty steamed and braised dish recipes
A few shallow cuts in each boiled egg let the soy sauce get past the slick white, which turns brown in the pot. The tofu and eggs keep for about five days in the fridge, and they are better after a day or two, once the seasoning has gone deeper.
Firm tofu cut into thick slabs and steamed comes out with a slight spring on the outside and a silky center. The soy and gochugaru sauce, left to sit until the chili flakes swell and thicken it, is spooned onto the hot tofu and seeps into each cut face with salty, mild heat.
A well-made dubu jorim has three layers in one bite: a dark, slightly chewy glazed surface, a seasoned middle, and a soft white center. That outer layer forms in the frying pan, where the tofu browns on both sides before the sauce is added. Blotting off surface water first keeps the oil from spitting.
The longer the kimchi has sat in the fridge and the sourer it has become, the better it suits this braise. Simmered with soy sauce and gochugaru (Korean chili flakes), its sharp acidity softens, and the tofu, laid in raw without frying, soaks up the red liquid to the middle.
Each block of firm tofu gets a shallow well scooped out with a spoon, and none of the scooped tofu is wasted: it returns to the filling with ground beef, shiitake and carrot. Dubu-seon comes from the Korean royal court table; this version skips the older crumble-and-shape method and steams the stuffed blocks directly, with the filling mounded slightly above the rim. A thin glaze of soy sauce and water keeps the finish light and lets the mild tofu lead.
The ribs spend half an hour in cold water and get a quick blanch and rinse before they ever meet the soy braising liquid. It is an extra step, but it keeps the foam and impurities out of the pot, and the finished sauce tastes clean rather than murky.
This is better ten minutes after it comes off the heat than right away; as it cools, the potatoes keep drinking in the soy sauce until they are seasoned all the way through.
Lean pork tenderloin pulls apart after boiling into long, even strands that take up a soy reduction along every fiber. It tastes better fully chilled than straight from the pot, since the seasoning keeps settling into the meat as it cools. Whole garlic cloves braise alongside and soften enough to eat with the pork.
Sea bream fillet is spread flat, layered with cucumber, carrot and oyster mushrooms, then rolled and steamed into a log of white fish wrapped around a core of color. The soy, vinegar and sesame oil sauce sits on the side rather than being cooked in, which keeps the mild bream tasting of itself.
Steaming instead of braising keeps this flounder milder and moister than the spicy simmered versions. The fish sits on sliced onion in a rimmed heatproof dish, where the soy sauce, rice wine and juices from the fish collect underneath as a ready-made sauce.
Shallow scores on both sides of the flounder let the chili broth seep in, so even this thin fish is evenly seasoned. When the flesh turns white and flakes easily, it is served with the radish and plenty of the red broth.
Gochugaru and fresh cheongyang chili together make the broth properly hot. The radish is already half cooked when the flounder goes on top, and it ends up absorbing the fat that seeps from the fish as well as the seasoning.
No meat goes into this braise, only eggplant and tofu sold for pan-frying; the eggplant drinks up the soy and chili sauce and turns silky, while the tofu, browned first, keeps its shape around it.
There is no salting the eggplant to draw out water. It softens on its own under the lid, in the same pot as browned pork shoulder, and picks up the rendered fat along with the soy and chili, which makes it far richer than eggplant braised alone.
The eggplants are steamed whole, then torn by hand along the grain instead of sliced. The torn surface is rough, and the soy dressing clings to it. It is a summer side dish for when eggplants are everywhere, and it can go to the table chilled.
The eggplant goes into the simmering soy sauce cut side down and is left alone for the first two minutes, long enough for the spongy flesh to drink in the sauce.
Soft, collapsing eggplant with springy shrimp in between. Oyster sauce goes in with the soy sauce, which makes it more savory than a plain eggplant braise, and with only a pinch of chili flakes it tastes salty and a little sweet rather than spicy.
Each piece of eggplant gets a deep cross cut that stops just short of the base, which opens it up like a pocket for a beef and tofu filling before it is steamed. Stuffing every piece by hand takes time, and the dish was traditionally kept for guests and feasts.
The eggplant is sauteed in oil for a few minutes before the sauce goes in. Dropped straight into the liquid, it would release water and thin the seasoning. Any braising liquid left over can go into bibimbap.
The usual way galbi jjim goes wrong is that the liquid cooks down while the beef is still tough. Before reducing the sauce, check that a chopstick slides into the meat; if it doesn't, add a splash of water, cover and keep going.
Giving the potatoes a 5-minute head start in plain water lines up their timing with the beltfish, and the starch they release thickens the sauce. Since beltfish breaks apart if handled often, the broth is ladled over rather than the pieces moved, and the reduced sauce is spooned onto rice with the fish.
Hairtail is so soft and oily that stirring it with a ladle breaks it apart. Here the pot itself gets a shake now and then to move the sauce around underneath, and broth is spooned over the fish only in the last few minutes with the lid off.
In Jeju, galchi-jorim is made with plenty of liquid, close to a stew, and rice gets mixed into whatever sauce is left. Potato goes under the fish along with the radish, another Jeju habit, and its starch gives the sauce some body.
The hairtail pieces sit in lightly salted water for five minutes and are then patted completely dry. A dry surface is what lets the chili and soy sauce sink into the fish.