1880 Korean recipes. Page 19 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Korean Soy Braised Chicken.
Bone-in chicken, chunky potato, carrot and onion braise in soy sauce and sugar, with no glass noodles. The glossy sauce forms only in the last few minutes, after the potatoes are tender and the lid comes off. Uncover too early and the liquid runs out before the potatoes cook; keep it covered to the end and the sauce stays thin.
Laid on a spoonful of hot rice, one of these peppers delivers salty, funky soybean paste and lingering heat in a single bite. Pricking each Cheongyang chili all over with a fork lets the doenjang brine reach the inside instead of sitting on the skin.
With no meat in the pot, the broth takes its savory backbone from oyster and shiitake mushrooms sauteed in perilla oil before the kelp stock goes in. Ground perilla seed stirred in at the end turns it milky and smooth, and slippery rice noodles glide through the thickened soup. Torn oyster mushrooms and thick shiitake slices supply the chew.
Chicken thigh marinated for 10 minutes in soy sauce, honey, and garlic darkens into a sticky glaze as the sugars catch in a hot pan. Left untouched for the first minute, the pieces color properly. Tomato passata cuts through that sweet-salty coating, and garlic shows up twice, in the marinade and again in the sauce. Thigh stays juicy under high heat where breast would dry out. Since soy already brings plenty of salt, the Parmesan is grated in last, to taste.
Gamtae, a fine Korean seaweed, crumbles between your fingers into flakes that cover the shrimp and avocado with a light sea flavor. Lime juice, soy sauce and a little honey cut through the richness of the avocado, while red onion soaked in cold water adds crunch without the sharp bite. Blanching the shrimp for only 2 minutes and chilling them straight away keeps them springy rather than dry.
Cocoa and instant coffee darken the crumb of this cake, and small dots of sweet red bean paste sit scattered through the middle. Most bites are bittersweet mocha; every so often you hit a moist pocket of bean paste whose sweetness tones down the bitter coffee. The top is raked with a fork before baking, which leaves a rough, homey surface rather than a smooth glaze.
Peeled deodeok root, pounded five or six times with a mallet, flattens and opens along its fibers, then tears by hand into rough, ribbon-like strips. A thick gochujang and vinegar dressing is rubbed in. For bitterness, the strips soak in cold water for 5 minutes; taste one, and soak longer only if it is still sharp.
Air-fried chicken tenders go onto the sesame-salt rice straight from the basket, while the coating is still hot and firm, and get rolled at once. Waiting lets moisture from the rice and lettuce soften the crust before the roll is even closed.
No oil goes in the pan. Well-aged, sour kimchi is fried in the fat that melts out of thin-sliced brisket (chadolbagi), and comes out tasting of beef.
Flat fish cake sheets are folded zigzag onto a skewer, battered, breaded and fried. It is nothing like the soft eomuk skewers served in broth: this one is crunchy, finished with ketchup and mustard and eaten in hand.
Drops of omija liquid hit freezer-cold oil and set at once into tiny frozen beads, each one carrying the tart-sweet taste of schisandra berry syrup. Half the juice stays a clear red, while the other half gets milk and yogurt powder for an opaque pink, so the bowl holds two colors and two flavors. A quick rinse in cold water after straining takes away the oily film that would otherwise coat the tongue.
Dried Solomon's seal root gives a clear brown tea with a nutty, rooty aroma. Licorice root and pear simmer along with it and sweeten it enough that honey is optional, and unlike coffee or black tea, it has no caffeine. It is drunk hot in winter and fully chilled over ice in summer.
Soy sauce, pear juice and sesame oil give this thick sirloin a flavor close to bulgogi, while the cooking itself follows steak: a hard sear, a rest, then slicing against the grain. Pear juice tenderizes, but the marinade stays short because past 30 minutes it turns the surface mushy.
The dried pollock strips soak in cold water for only five minutes. Any longer and the savory flavor leaches out while the flesh goes soft. Toasted in sesame oil and simmered with bean sprouts for fifteen minutes, they turn the broth faintly milky, and a spoonful of doenjang makes a heavier version.
Fresh oysters, at their best in winter, get a very light dusting of flour and a dip in egg before frying, with chopped garlic chives added at the end. Large ones can still be underdone in the middle after the outside turns golden, and the heat goes down while they stay in the pan a little longer.
The deodeok root is peeled, tapped lightly to open the grain, then sliced on the diagonal about 5 mm thick; cut thinner, it loses its scent. The broth is rice-rinsing water with a tablespoon of gochujang and half a tablespoon of doenjang stirred in.
The cartilage near the wing joints softens the longer it braises, which changes the chew when you tear the meat off the bone. The wings reduce uncovered and get turned two or three times so the glaze works into the joints. Eaten with the fingers, they often end up next to beer or soju.
The sweet-sour radish cubes that come with Korean fried chicken are easy to make at home, and their crunch depends on the brine temperature. Pouring the brine only once the pot no longer feels warm keeps the radish firm and snappy. Even 2 cm cubes season at the same rate, and a jar dried completely after sterilizing keeps stray water from diluting the brine. Chilled for a day, it has an acidity that clears the palate between pieces of fried chicken; use clean tongs and finish it within about a week.
Pieces of rested wheat dough, stretched thin by hand and torn straight into the pot, cook into chewy, rough-edged dumplings in an anchovy-kelp broth. Letting the dough rest allows it to stretch without snapping back, and the thinner each piece, the faster it cooks while keeping its bite. Potato releases starch that gives the soup natural body, and ground perilla seed turns it milky and nutty. It is a rainy-day staple in Korean home cooking.
Pre-cooked octopus is patted dry and seared hard over high heat so the outside turns chewy, then tossed with penne in a tomato cream sauce warmed up with gochugaru (Korean chili flakes). The sauce fills the tubes of the penne, so every forkful with a piece of octopus brings plenty of it along.
Springy canned sea snails (golbaengi) are tossed with cucumber, onion and scallion in a hot, sour and sweet sauce of gochujang, chili flakes, vinegar and sugar, a classic drinking snack in Korea. A 5-minute soak in cold water takes the harsh edge off the onion so it blends into the sauce. The snails drain well in a sieve first, as leftover brine from the can thins the sauce until it no longer clings. The plate goes to the table right away: once dressed, the salt starts drawing water out of the vegetables. Spooned over thin somyeon noodles, it becomes golbaengi somyeon, with the noodles soaking up the dressing.
A single mugwort butter dough does double duty: part of it is pressed into a firm base, and the rest goes over a layer of mashed chestnut. That topping is just the leftover dough pinched into pea-sized bits and scattered, and it bakes up uneven and craggy.
The first thing you taste is ground perilla seed (deulkkae), which clings to the sprouts in a pale, nutty coating. The sprouts steam in a little water under a lid rather than boiling, so they stay crunchy and hold less water.
Chicken breast glazed in a soy, sugar and onion sauce is topped with scrambled egg and mayonnaise. The eggs cook in a separate pan and come off the heat before they fully set, and the mayo goes on in thin lines.