1880 Korean recipes. Page 47 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Soybean Leaf Water Kimchi, Korean Buckwheat Mixed Noodles.
Raw soybean leaves go straight into the brine, neither salted nor blanched, and their green, beany aroma comes through intact. Pear, garlic and ginger are blended and strained through cloth so that only the juice is used. Without that step, pulp ends up floating in the liquid and stuck between the leaves.
Equal measures of soy sauce and vinegar give this Gangwon-style dressing its sour edge, with gochugaru for heat and a little sugar to round it off. Finely chopped kimchi clings to the noodles instead of sitting in clumps, adding fermented tang and crunch to every bite. With little gluten to hold them together, buckwheat noodles snap apart when boiled past the package time or pressed down while mixing. The dressing is folded in by lifting from below. Several rinses in cold water wash off the surface starch that would make the strands stick together. Water left on the rinsed noodles thins the dressing fast, which makes thorough draining as important as the chill.
Whisking doenjang (Korean fermented soybean paste) into plain yogurt gives a dressing that starts tangy and finishes savory and salty, a lighter alternative to the usual mayonnaise. Roasted kabocha and chickpeas make the bowl filling, while lettuce, red cabbage, and grape tomatoes keep it crisp and juicy. Sunflower seeds go on at the very end so they keep their crunch.
Every butterbur stem has to be peeled end to end, because the outer skin is a layer of tough strings. Some bitterness survives blanching; the stems are dressed with doenjang and ground perilla seeds, and if the bitterness is too much, more perilla powder goes in.
Rice, egg and sesame oil are nearly all there is, so the flavor is gentle. Seasoning stays light, just soup soy sauce and salt, so nothing covers the sesame oil, and the egg sits in the porridge as soft, thin ribbons.
Oily mackerel and boiled gondre, a rustic, grassy Korean thistle green, share one gochujang and soy glaze. The mackerel is pan-browned separately and added near the end, so it is still in large flakes on the plate.
These are the squid rings Korean street stalls and snack bars fry to order, made at home. The batter is mixed with cold water and stirred only briefly, deliberately leaving small lumps; those lumps are what make the coating rough and crunchy.
Thin slices of ginger packed in an equal weight of sugar give up their juice, and that juice slowly dissolves the sugar into a thick syrup. Whether the jar keeps comes down to moisture. Water left on the ginger or inside the boiled jar thins the syrup and lets mold start at the surface, so set aside time to dry the ginger before slicing and the jar before filling it. Slices about 2 mm thick release juice steadily; thicker pieces are slow, and grated ginger breaks up in the syrup and clouds every cup. Unlike Korean ginger tea simmered with jujubes for each pot, one jar of saenggang-cheong lets you stir two spoonfuls into hot water whenever you want a cup.
Dried filefish is browned on both sides in butter, then the heat drops and a thin glaze of soy sauce and syrup goes on. A pinch of chili powder and sesame seeds, a few snips into long strips, and it is ready to sit next to beer or soju.
Toasting the dried shrimp in sesame oil first drives off their staleness, and their aroma alone is enough to carry the broth without anchovy stock. Season with salt instead of soup soy sauce and the soup stays clearer.
The blue crab simmers first and gives the broth its sweetness; clams and shrimp come after. It is a red, chili-heavy stew, but a spoonful of doenjang underneath keeps it from being only hot.
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.
Larger and thicker than perilla leaves, soybean leaves take longer to absorb the brine but reward you with a hearty chew, and a single leaf wraps a whole spoonful of rice. Give them at least two days in the fridge, until the soy color reaches the middle of each leaf; this is not a same-day banchan. Garlic, cheongyang chili, and onion steep in the brine alongside the leaves, giving the soy flavor a sharp, peppery lift. The usual way to eat it is draped over hot rice.
Bulgogi seared fast over high heat meets raw minari, a fragrant Korean water dropwort, on udon tossed in a gochujang, soy, and sesame oil dressing. The beef is patted dry before marinating so it browns at the edges instead of stewing in its own liquid.
Golden seared tofu and buttery avocado share a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, and lemon juice. Familiar Korean seasoning paired with citrus acidity keeps the bowl savory without making it heavy. Pressing the tofu until its surface feels dry cuts down on splattering and gives a cleaner sear. Left alone until the first side firms up, the cubes sear well enough to hold their shape when tossed. The avocado is cut only once everything else is ready and goes straight into the lemony dressing, where it browns less. Let the hot tofu cool slightly before it touches the greens.
Minari, sold in English as water parsley, smells clean and green in a way parsley and celery do not, and the scent does not survive much heat. Past 20 seconds in the pot it leaves with the steam and only the crunch remains, which is why the blanching stops there.
The eggs are fried first, then the same pan goes up to high for the shrimp and squid, which come off the heat the moment they turn opaque. Whatever juices collect in the pan are poured over the rice along with the seafood.
Blanched beef intestines (gopchang) go into a dry pan first and give up their own fat, and that fat, not cooking oil, is what the gochujang sauce and vegetables are fried in. The chewy gopchang carries a strong hit of chili from both gochujang and chili flakes.
The goal is the school-gate snack-stand kind: soft, puffy wheat rice cakes seasoned sweet and hot all the way through. Wheat cakes swell easily, so they soak in cold water for 10 minutes first to rinse off surface starch. A pinch of black pepper at the end pushes it closer to market-stall tteokbokki.
The ginger is peeled and sliced thin, the jujubes pitted and halved, and the two simmer together. Unpeeled ginger works too, but peeling it keeps out the earthy taste of the skin. After straining, honey and a tiny pinch of cinnamon go in, and two slices of lemon float on top. Drink it warm.
Webfoot octopus has a smaller body and thicker legs than nakji, the long-arm octopus. It spends just 10 minutes in the spicy marinade and 3 to 4 minutes over high heat, and the slightly charred sauce that catches on the pan floor is part of the flavor. In spring they often come full of roe, and the leftover sauce goes into fried rice.
Swiss chard has more chew than spinach and a slight bitterness in the leaf, which sits well in a nutty doenjang broth. Korean families make it most in spring and autumn when chard is around; out of season, frozen chard gives much the same broth.
Kodari, pollock dried only partway, has a dense, chewy flesh that keeps its grain through a long simmer. It can still break if flipped, so it sits on the bed of radish and gets the broth spooned over it two or three times instead. Rice-rinse water forms the broth and tones down any fishy smell.
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.