1880 Korean recipes. Page 63 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Korean Kimchi Acorn Jelly Rice Bowl, Korean Beef Brisket and Bean Sprout Stir-fry.
Slippery strips of acorn jelly (dotorimuk, a firm, mild starch jelly) sit over rice in an ice-cold broth of kimchi juice and water, with chopped kimchi in the middle for crunch. Sesame oil tossed through the rice and a scattering of seaweed flakes give a nutty, toasty note that cold broth would otherwise lack. Apart from the rice, nothing needs cooking, which makes it a summer bowl.
Soybean sprouts pick up the beefy richness of thin-sliced brisket (chadolbaegi), because the fat the brisket renders is the only oil used for the chili sauce. Brisket this thin browns in a minute or two and the sprouts should stay crunchy, which makes the whole cook brief and fast. Blot off only the excess fat; wiping the pan dry leaves nothing to fry the paste in.
King oyster mushrooms stay firm and chewy even when cooked, enough to stand in for meat on the plate. A shallow crosshatch on the long cut faces gives the butter soy sauce somewhere to cling as it thickens. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp paper towel instead of washing them.
Blue crabs in spring are packed with meat and taste noticeably sweet. Here they are halved and simmered in their shells with chili flakes and Cheongyang peppers, and the closer to live the crabs are when they go in, the more of that sweetness comes through.
Taro stem that has not been boiled long enough leaves a prickly, itchy feeling in the throat. So this autumn stew uses thoroughly boiled stems, soaked in cold water and rinsed several times to take off the slippery coating before they go in. The broth is beef and doenjang, thickened with ground perilla seed.
Instead of being stir-fried, shishito-style peppers are dusted with a thin layer of flour and steamed, which keeps their mild sweetness and soft bite. During steaming the white coating turns translucent, forming a thin film that the dressing of soy sauce, gochugaru, garlic and sesame oil clings to.
A brief 12-minute salting wilts spinach leaves while the stems keep their snap, giving two textures in each bite. Sand lance fish sauce adds salty depth to the green, grassy flavor, and green plum syrup rounds off the salt. Thick stems are split in half so they season at the same pace as the leaves. Once it has chilled for at least six hours, it goes to the table cold with rice.
The chilled broth comes from young radish kimchi brine, sharpened with vinegar and a touch of hot mustard that lingers after the sourness. Because the soup is meant to be drunk, temperature matters as much as seasoning, and even the toppings wait in the fridge. Thin somyeon absorbs the broth quickly, so bowls are filled right before they go to the table.
Pork belly cut into 1 cm pieces renders enough fat to fry the kimchi and rice, so no cooking oil is added and every grain tastes of pork. That only works if the pork gets 4 to 5 minutes, until the edges are golden and the fat coats the pan.
Take the garlic scapes off the heat while they are still bright green and they stay crisp to the core; longer than that, the color dulls and they turn tough. For anyone who eats less heat, hold back some of the gochujang sauce and add it bit by bit, tasting as you go.
King oyster mushrooms sliced 0.7 cm thick lengthwise are laid in butter in a single layer and browned on both sides, and only then does the soy glaze go in around the edge of the pan to reduce for about a minute. Finished with green onion and sesame, the salty butter-soy flavor works next to rice or with drinks.
Soybean pulp (kongbiji, the solids left from making soy milk or tofu) drinks up the anchovy stock as it cooks, and with the pre-fried ground pork and sour kimchi mixed through it, the pot ends up thick enough that a spoon leaves a hollow behind.
Burdock, which stays firm, and potato, which crumbles at the edges, share the pot, but the potato goes in only after the burdock has had seven minutes on its own. Added together, the potatoes would be mush by the time the burdock softened. Oyster mushrooms join them and there is no meat; the broth is anchovy-kelp stock with perilla seed powder stirred in.
The firm, slightly chewy flesh of half-dried pollock holds together through a long spicy braise and takes the seasoning all the way in. Gochugaru and gochujang together give the sauce body and a deep red color, and a spoonful of syrup added near the end gives it shine. Basting two or three times beats flipping, which only tears the fish. When the sauce turns thick and sticks to the pollock, it is ready to serve with the radish and a bowl of rice.
Before any kimchi paste is spread on, napa cabbage soaks for 6 to 8 hours in sea salt dissolved in kelp and dried shiitake stock that has been cooled completely. Most of the dry salt is scattered on the thick stems, and when a stem bends smoothly without snapping, the salting is done.
Chicken breast and radish simmer gently into a clear stock, and yuja (citron) syrup stirred in once it is cold lays a sweet, fragrant citrus note over the savory chicken. The pot stays below a rolling boil for 15 minutes so the broth comes out clear, and nothing oily goes into it. The same chicken then gets shredded for the topping, making one ingredient do double duty as broth and garnish. Because the stock has to cool completely and chill, it gets started well before the noodles. The yuja syrup needs to dissolve fully in the cold broth, or its sweetness collects in one spot. Freezing part of the broth into ice cubes keeps the bowl cold without watering it down.
Finely ground toasted sesame and a splash of milk turn plain rice porridge creamy and nutty, and a spoonful of honey on each bowl leaves a gentle sweetness at the end. The seeds are ground very fine in a mortar or blender, since coarse bits make the porridge gritty. Because the rice soaks for 30 minutes first, this is not a last-minute porridge. Once the milk is added, the bottom catches easily and needs steady stirring.
Bacon cooked slowly over low heat gives up smoky fat, and that fat becomes the base for stir-frying the garlic scapes, with little or no extra oil needed. Since bacon is already salty, the soy sauce is scaled back to taste, and a spoonful of syrup leaves a thin glossy coat that balances the salt with sweetness.
Doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, is stirred into melted unsalted butter with garlic and lemon juice, brushed over large shrimp and grilled in a very hot grill pan. The paste already brings plenty of salt, which is why the butter is unsalted and any extra salt waits until the cooked shrimp have been tasted.
Once the bean sprouts are in, the lid goes on and stays shut for seven minutes. Koreans have long held that this keeps the beany smell away, and with those seven minutes included, the soup goes from prep to bowl in about 15 minutes.
A can of tuna stands in for meat and gives the doenjang broth its savory depth, with plenty of ugeoji, blanched outer napa cabbage leaves. Use only half the oil from the can; all of it makes the broth greasy.
Dried only partway in the sea wind on Korea's east coast, kodari pollock keeps some moisture in its flesh. Braised, it turns chewy without the dry, fibrous texture of fully dried hwangtae or bugeo. Radish under the fish keeps it off the hot pot bottom while a spicy-sweet sauce of gochujang, gochugaru, soy sauce and sugar cooks into it over about half an hour. It tastes even better after a night in the fridge, and leftover sauce makes a good bibimbap seasoning.
Radish sliced 2 mm thin and soaked in a sweet-sour brine becomes a soft, pliable wrapper for pork belly or fried chicken. Any thicker slice resists rolling and gets sliced again until the pieces match. The brine boils only 30 seconds past the first bubbles at the edge, because longer boiling drives off the vinegar's sharpness, and it is cooled to lukewarm before pouring, since hot brine partly cooks the radish and makes the slices tear when rolled. The wraps are ready after a day, though the sourness and sweetness reach the center by day three. A slice of lemon in the container adds a citrus note, and each bite of fatty meat gets a sharp, clean finish from the wrap.
Yuja syrup and lemon juice brighten soy sauce and tsuyu, giving this chilled udon a fruitier, sweet-sour sauce than plain tsuyu. With the sauce already balanced by 220 ml water, any rinse water left between the strands dilutes it directly. Seaweed flakes and sesame turn soggy once they touch the sauce and go on only right before eating.