1880 Korean recipes. Page 65 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Korean Butterbur Stem Stir-fry with Perilla, Korean Grilled Spanish Mackerel.
Even boiled butterbur stems often keep tough outer fibers on the thicker pieces. Snap each one, and if strands come away with it, peel them off then and there. The ground perilla seed goes in while a little broth still covers the pan bottom, so it wraps the stems in a thick coat instead of clumping in one spot.
Spanish mackerel belongs to the mackerel family yet smells less fishy and has softer flesh. After ten minutes under salt and pepper, it gets a dusting of flour shaken off until the grain of the fish shows through, then goes into an oiled pan over medium heat.
This is a soup for November through February, the months when maesaengi (a seaweed as fine as thread) and oysters are both in season. The seaweed spreads loose through the broth, so every spoonful lifts green threads along with an oyster or two.
This stew comes from farm households that picked apple snails off the rice paddy banks and dropped them into their doenjang stew, and the ingredient list is still just snails, doenjang, tofu, zucchini and anchovy stock. Snail meat toughens with long boiling, so it goes in after the zucchini has had about three minutes, and the tofu follows at the very end for a minute or two.
Each black soybean ends up lacquered in a thin, dark coat of soy sauce and syrup, with a chewy, nutty center. Soy sauce added before the beans are fully soft keeps them firm, so they simmer plain until no hard center remains. Once the brown sugar is stirred in, the heat stays low, because the sugar scorches on the bottom long before the beans have absorbed the seasoning. Corn syrup is added only when the liquid is nearly gone, which keeps the beans glossy and pliable instead of hard after they cool. Cooled completely before refrigerating, the beans hold their gloss, and kongjaban is a side dish to dip into over a couple of weeks.
Diced turnip ferments submerged in a gochugaru broth, landing between cubed radish kimchi and water kimchi: more liquid than the first, redder and spicier than the second. Turnips are scrubbed with the skin on and only bruised spots are cut away, keeping their sweetness and firm texture. Salting lasts 25 minutes, and the water it draws out is poured away so no bitterness carries over. If turnip greens are on hand, a few chopped in with the roots ferment alongside and improve the aroma. After a day at room temperature, small bubbles and a light sour smell signal that the jar should move to the fridge for two more days.
Cleaned blue crab sits on the rice, which cooks in anchovy-kelp stock with doenjang dissolved in it, and the crab's sweetness and the earthy paste soak down into every grain. After the rice has rested, one more minute over low heat builds a layer of nurungji (scorched rice) on the bottom. Doenjang varies in saltiness from brand to brand, so start with a tablespoon and taste the stock.
Blanched and dressed straight away, butterbur stems keep a clear bitter edge; simmered and stirred with soup soy sauce and water for five minutes or more, they turn much milder. In spring it appears on mountain-village tables next to gondre and chwinamul greens.
Pork belly goes into a dry pan and cooks in its own fat, turned just once after the first side browns. Thin slices of garlic then fry in the rendered fat, and the meat, cut into bites with scissors, is wrapped in lettuce with the garlic, ssamjang (a soybean and chili paste), green onion and chili pepper.
The flavor of this broth comes from the innards packed in the crab's top shell. That is why the shells go into the pot with the radish before the bodies, so the innards can be stirred loose into the gochujang broth. It sits on a tabletop burner, and as it cooks down, a little water goes in so everyone can keep eating to the bottom.
Thin-sliced woosamgyeop, fatty beef brisket, is fried with garlic until its fat runs, and the chili flakes and soup soy sauce are toasted in that fat before any anchovy stock goes in. That is where the red, slick broth comes from. Two cheongyang chilies make it properly hot, and the bean sprouts go in last and come out still crunchy.
With only 80 ml of water in the pot, the sprouts cook in trapped steam under the chili-soy seasoning rather than being blanched first and dressed afterward. That small amount of liquid is why the sprouts are drained but not shaken bone dry: a little surface water tops up that steaming liquid.
A few fresh basil leaves in the jar give this soy pickle an herbal note that ordinary jangajji does not have. The brine is cooled completely before it is poured over, because peeled cherry tomatoes turn soft under hot liquid. The skins slip off from a shallow cross cut, since a deep cut makes the flesh split open in the boiling water. Once the jar has chilled for a day, the vinegar settles and the tomatoes' own sweetness comes forward, and the texture holds for about a week when refrigerated. Serve them with rice or rich grilled meat, or on cheese and crackers with drinks.
Blue crab starts in cold water and boils for 12 minutes to make the stock behind this porridge, releasing a natural sweetness from the shells and meat. Once the crab cools, picking the meat from the legs as well as the body gives the porridge plenty of sweet flakes to bite into.
This one is built on sliced garlic browned slowly over low heat until it loses its bite. Clam meat and minari (water parsley) are tossed in that sweet, toasty garlic oil.
On a flat, thin fish like tongue sole, the chili marinade sits evenly on the surface and seasons the flesh quickly. Maesil cheong, a green plum syrup, takes the pasty edge off the gochujang and, with the sugar, caramelizes into a glossy brown coating.
Cod and pollock are soft-fleshed fish, so once the pieces are in the pot they are never turned; the spicy broth is just spooned over them. That is how the pieces stay whole all the way to the table. Swap in clams or shrimp and it becomes a seafood maeuntang.
Summer yeolmu, young radish greens, leaves a faint bitterness at the end of each spoonful of doenjang broth. It is best while the stems still crunch, so it does not simmer for long.
Steaming the peeled cloves for 8 minutes before they ever touch the sauce is what sets this apart from garlic simply braised in a pan. The cloves arrive in the soy and syrup already slightly translucent, so a short, gentle braise softens them through without burning the outside. Raw bite turns mellow and sweet, and each clove ends up glossy and intact, a small side to eat with rice or alongside grilled meat.
With taro stems, the work is in the prep rather than the pickling. Fresh stems are peeled wearing gloves, boiled, then soaked well in cold water before they go into a soy and vinegar brine with garlic and ginger. It is a fridge side dish meant to be eaten within three or four days of making it.
Soy-braised beef, torn along the grain, goes over rice with whole shishito-style peppers (kkwari gochu) and enough of the glossy braising liquid to mix through. The peppers simmer whole for just 6 minutes, long enough to wilt without going limp, and keep a mild heat.
The beef and minari (water parsley) go in at equal weights, which keeps the minari's slightly bitter aroma clearly present behind the soy-seasoned meat. The minari gets only 20 to 30 seconds in the pan, enough to soften the leaves while the stems stay crisp.
The thin coat of olive oil over the salted tenderloin is there to keep the coarse salt from falling off into the pan. Tenderloin is lean, so it gets basted at the end with butter infused with garlic and rosemary, and the lemon is squeezed over sparingly, right before eating.
The wide Chinese glass noodles need about two hours in lukewarm water and should be put to soak well before any cooking starts. Mala sauces vary in salt and oil from brand to brand; stir some into the beef-bone broth first and taste before deciding whether to add more.