189 recipes. Page 4 of 8
Hearty steamed and braised dish recipes
The square fish cake sheets (eomuk) are cut into triangles small enough to pick up together with a cube of potato. The fish cake goes in only when the potatoes are half done; any earlier and it turns soggy.
Despite the name, gamja-jjim is not steamed: potato cubes simmer in soy sauce, sugar and garlic until almost no liquid is left and a glossy film coats each piece. Cubes cut to one size take the seasoning to the center at the same pace, and no piece ends up bland inside. Scallions and a little sesame oil finish it with a fresh, nutty note.
Instead of small whole potatoes, this version peels ordinary ones and cuts them into bite-size chunks. The corn syrup waits until the potatoes are nearly tender; added that late, it stays a thin shine instead of turning into a sticky syrup. Serve it warm or fully cooled.
In the same soy broth, the potato soaks up seasoning to the center while the peeled quail eggs only brown on the outside. It has long been a familiar lunchbox side for Korean children, and it is seasoned without any heat.
Skate flesh is threaded with soft cartilage, which gives it a pleasant chew. It braises in a gochugaru and soy liquid over heat low enough that the surface barely moves, almost steaming.
A small piece of butter on each scallop melts into the juice pooled in the shell and becomes a salty, rich sauce with no extra step. Cleaning is simple and the steaming takes six or seven minutes, which makes it easy to put out when drinks are being set up in a hurry.
Mild Korean green peppers are halved and packed with a pork and tofu filling, the same idea as pan-fried stuffed peppers, but steamed instead of fried for a lighter result, with skins that turn just translucent. The thin dusting of flour inside each pepper is not decoration: it glues the filling to the pepper so nothing slides out during steaming. Leaving a short stem on gives each piece a handle.
Fat melting out of the mackerel mixes into the spicy broth and ends up in the potatoes. The potatoes simmer in the sauce first, and the fish joins them only when a chopstick slides halfway in; it needs just a short braise.
Two mackerel are cooked whole, with only the heads and innards removed. Deep scores along the back open up in the heat and let the spicy sauce run into the flesh instead of sitting on the skin.
Mackerel is oily and strong enough that a sauce built on both gochujang (Korean chili paste) and chili flakes does not bury it. A little ginger juice in the sauce takes the edge off its fishiness.
Each piece of mackerel gets a 20-second dip in hot water to set the outside white, then goes in a single layer over aged kimchi (mukeunji) lining the pot. By the end, the kimchi has soaked up the fish fat and turned glossy.
The radish is half-cooked on its own beforehand, so it is seasoned all the way through in the short time the mackerel takes. With just half a tablespoon of gochujang, the soy sauce leads and the heat stays gentle.
Gondre, a soft mountain thistle green, soaks up seasoning readily, and steamed with ground perilla seed and perilla oil it turns deeply nutty. It is kept a little moist and often spooned over rice and mixed in.
The konjac is blanched for two minutes first to get rid of its faint limey smell. Shallow crosshatching on both sides lets the soy glaze settle into the grooves, and once it is done it cools completely before serving, which evens out the seasoning.
Steamed in the shell, oysters keep the briny liquor that pools around the meat, so they taste of the sea with no added salt. It is a quick way to cook winter oysters from start to finish, and a dip of soy sauce, vinegar and chili flakes puts a sour edge over the salt.
Salted tiny shrimp (saeujeot) season the eggs instead of salt, and anchovy stock gives them savory depth. Cooked slowly in an earthenware pot (ttukbaegi) over low heat with a gentle stir through the middle, it comes out soft and puffed, nothing like the glassy-smooth custard of Japanese chawanmushi.
Crunchy bean sprouts and chewy squid and shrimp share one platter, all coated in a thick red sauce. It shows up often as a dish to go with drinks.
Thick rounds of zucchini are hollowed into little cups and filled with beef, tofu and shiitake before steaming. Soft zucchini and dense filling come in the same bite, with thin strips of egg crepe on top.
Fermented skate carries a sharp ammonia sting, and steaming it under a gochugaru and gochujang paste tames that edge without erasing it. In Jeolla Province the dish turns up at feasts and ancestral rites, and the smell is the point rather than a flaw.
There is no stock in this pot: the mussels open over a splash of rice wine and garlic, and their own juices become the broth. Everything happens fast over high heat, and the main mistake is letting it go on, since the meat shrinks and toughens within minutes. Green onion and cheongyang chili (a hot Korean green pepper) go in only once most shells have opened, adding fragrance and a clean bite. Any broth left at the bottom is worth saving for kalguksu noodles or a pack of ramen.
Whole eggplants roasted in the oven, rather than charred over an open flame, give this Turkish dish a silky, mild puree instead of a smoky one. The flesh is mashed into a butter-and-flour béchamel with aged cheddar and a pinch of nutmeg, then topped with lamb leg braised in tomato and Turkish red pepper paste.
Once the shells go red and the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) broth has worked its way into every crack, the crab meat gets picked out and eaten over rice. The radish lining the bottom of the pot soaks up the crab too, so it is worth fishing out alongside.
Dried pollock strips turn pleasantly chewy as they absorb a soy and gochugaru glaze, while the potatoes go soft and floury around them. That chewiness depends on a short soak: five minutes in lukewarm water is enough, and anything longer leaves the fish limp and stringy in the pan. The potatoes get a head start for the same reason, so the pollock only needs a few minutes in the sauce. A little oligosaccharide syrup rounds off the saltiness, and the dish holds up well in the fridge for the next day's lunchbox.
On drying racks in Gangwon-do, pollock freezes and thaws dozens of times over the winter to become hwangtae, and the flesh ends up full of sponge-like pores. Braised in soy sauce with gochujang, it takes the salty-sweet seasoning in through those pores, all the way to the middle rather than just on the surface.