1880 Korean recipes. Page 60 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Imja-sutang (Royal Chilled Pine Nut Soup).
Pine nuts and sesame are ground into an ivory broth that is poured over shredded chicken breast and topped with fine strips of cucumber. Milk and the chicken poaching liquid set the thickness, and it is served cold or just warm. The dish comes down from banquets at the Joseon court.
The grassy bitterness of spring mugwort (ssuk) sits on top of a nutty perilla seed broth made with rice-rinse water. Tough stems are pulled off and mostly the leaves are used, cooked for just the final 2 minutes to keep their green color and scent.
Canned saury comes with bones already softened, so draining and rinsing it cuts the cooking time roughly in half, while fresh saury takes longer to cook through. Either way the oily flesh holds its own against a sauce of gochujang and gochugaru, and the radish underneath turns into a sweet, sauce-soaked braise of its own.
Whole stalks of green onion ferment into this kimchi, and time turns their sharp, raw bite mellow while the white stems go supple. A shallow slit down the thick white part lets salt and paste reach inside rather than sitting on the surface.
Crown daisy, the herb sold as ssukgat in Korean markets, brings a grassy, faintly bitter note that the sweet-sour dressing of soy sauce, vinegar, and plum syrup balances. Mung bean glass noodles should come out translucent but still a little chewy; softer than that and they clump into a sticky mass once dressed. Cucumber and crown daisy shed water as they sit, so the salad gets tossed right before it reaches the table.
Bean sprouts go limp if they linger in water that is barely simmering. The pot needs a hard boil, and the sprouts come out the moment their stems turn translucent, under 30 seconds, straight into cold water. Green onion and sesame seeds are not tossed in but scattered over the top once the sprouts are in the bowl.
Rice seasoned with sesame oil, salt and toasted sesame is spread on plastic wrap, filled with tuna mayo and squeezed into a ball. A little finely chopped carrot and cucumber goes into the filling as well. These are eaten without reheating, which is why they go into lunchboxes and come along on picnics and school sports days.
A light dusting of flour holds moisture in the cut crab and gives the sweet-salty soy glaze something to grip, and it ends up on your fingers as you work through the shells. Buy the crabs live and clean them just before cooking for firm, springy meat; frozen crab loses water as it thaws and turns soft.
Sweet potato, carrot, onion, squid, and shrimp share one pot of oil here, and they cook at very different speeds. Slicing the dense vegetables thin lets their centers soften before the coating darkens, while dry seafood spits less in the oil and carries a lighter batter. Cold water and a brief stir give a light, shattering shell, and the platter goes to the table with a small dish of soy sauce instead of salt.
Okdom, the tilefish most associated with Jeju, is grilled whole and seasoned with nothing more than coarse salt and pepper. The flesh is firm and flavorful enough on its own; even the ginger juice is brushed on only thinly, just to deal with any fishiness.
Marsh clams from the Seomjin River area around Hadong are tiny, so the pleasure lies in the broth: pale and clear, yet surprisingly full-tasting. Garlic chives go in just before the heat is cut, wilting only enough to stay green and fragrant. When lifting the clams out of their soaking water, scoop from the top so the sand at the bottom stays behind.
Wheat dough is torn by hand into thin pieces and dropped into the clam broth. Each piece comes out a slightly different thickness, and each one chews a little differently. The clams go in once the dough floats up translucent, the lid goes on, and the stew goes to the table right away, since sujebi swells quickly.
Well-fermented kimchi, sour and soft, meets the oil from canned Pacific saury and cooks down into a tangy, concentrated sauce. With no fish to clean, the work is mostly waiting: about twenty minutes of simmering, partly uncovered, until the kimchi turns tender and the liquid thickens. Sliced cheongyang chili goes in near the end to keep its sharp heat. The fish only needs heating through and stays in large pieces as long as nobody stirs it.
Mustard greens keep their sharp, nose-tingling heat even after a vinegar brine, and lemon juice added off the heat lays a fresh citrus note over it. The pickle is ready to eat after 12 hours in the fridge, but thick stems need about a day before the brine reaches their center. Next to fatty grilled meat, the spicy sourness clears the palate.
The slightly bitter scent of crown daisy, ssukgat, cuts through the nutty weight of perilla seed powder and keeps this soy-dressed somyeon lively without any chili heat. Plum syrup and vinegar add a light sweet-sour lift, and cold cucumber strips crunch between the thin noodles. Holding back part of the sauce before tossing leaves room to adjust once you see how much water the noodles carry.
Fresh tot (hijiki) turns from brown to bright green the moment it hits boiling water, and it has a pleasant snap. It's tossed with thin slices of onion in a sour-spicy dressing of equal parts gochujang and vinegar.
Daegu's junghwa bibimbap, a Chinese-Korean rice bowl, piles pork, squid, shrimp, and cabbage, stir-fried over high heat until no loose liquid is left, onto rice and tops it with a runny-yolked fried egg. Once the burner is on high there is no time to stop, and the chili powder, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and garlic are measured out beforehand.
A shallow slit in each shishito pepper (kkwarigochu) lets the soy and oyster sauce seep inside and keeps the peppers from bursting in the pan. The chicken tenderloin they cook with has almost no fat and a mild, clean taste.
Ice-cold shredded cabbage, lettuce, and cucumber sit under hot, crisp frozen dumplings, mixing two temperatures and two kinds of crunch in every forkful. The dressing of gochujang, vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil tastes sweet, sour, and spicy all at once. The dumplings are store-bought frozen ones, and they go on just before eating so they stay crisp.
Honey and soy sauce cook down into a dark, glossy glaze on this duck breast, while the cold-pan start renders enough fat from under the skin that no oil is added. The portion of marinade for the final brushing is set aside before any raw duck touches it.
Because the eel is poached first and picked off the bone, the soup can be eaten by the spoonful without worrying about bones. Koreans make a point of eating it in the hottest stretch of summer, and some add perilla seed powder or extra chili to change the broth.
Brisket simmered in plain water, with the foam skimmed off, makes a clear broth that a spoonful of gochugaru turns spicy. The 250 g of mung bean sprouts go in at the very end for two minutes at most, which keeps them crisp against the soft beef. It is ladled hot over rice.
Collagen from the oxtail joints melts into the pot over a long simmer, thickening the sauce to a glossy, sticky finish while the meat slips off the bone. The tails first simmer for 90 minutes with just green onion and ginger, so the meat is tender before the soy sauce and sugar are added. Radish and carrot join for the last stretch, sweetening the sauce and soaking it up. Chilled, the sauce sets like jelly and melts again on reheating, and lifting off the fat that hardens on top makes the braise taste cleaner. The dish is a fixture of Korean holiday tables.
Red and yellow bell peppers layered with cucumber make a bright jar, and their thick flesh soaks up the soy brine slowly without losing its crunch. Natural sweetness from the peppers balances the salty soy and the vinegar, while whole peppercorns leave a slight spice at the finish. It can be eaten the next day, but two to three days lets the brine reach the center. A jar of peppers alone, without the water-releasing cucumber, keeps two weeks or more chilled. Leftover brine works as a salad dressing.