1880 Korean recipes. Page 66 of 79. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Korean Lotus Root Perilla Seed Stew, Korean Braised Pork with Garlic Scapes.
No meat and no anchovy go into this stew, only vegetable stock. To give the broth some aroma, the onion and oyster mushrooms are fried in sesame oil first. The lotus root cooks just until a chopstick slides in, and the perilla powder goes in at the very end for a brief warm-through over low heat. Boiled for long, perilla turns chalky rather than nutty.
With only half a tablespoon of gochujang against soy sauce and oyster sauce, this braise leans salty and savory rather than red and fiery. That small spoonful of chili paste has to dissolve fully into the soy and oyster sauce, or the pork and scapes end up unevenly seasoned. Lean pork tenderloin, sliced across the grain about 1 cm thick, stays tender through a short simmer while its juices enrich the sauce. Adding the garlic scapes only after the liquid has dropped by half lets them soak up that sauce and still keep their crunch and mild, sharp bite. Left too long they turn stringy, which is why the pan comes off the heat with a spoonful of glossy sauce left for the rice.
Burdock browns the moment its cut face meets air. The bowl of vinegar water sits right beside the cutting board, and each stick goes in as soon as it is cut. A brief blanch takes off the raw, earthy edge and leaves the surface just slightly translucent. The soy brine is steeped with kelp, dried chili and peppercorns only briefly so it stays clean rather than bitter, then poured on hot before the jar goes straight into the fridge. Two days later the sticks are seasoned through, and the jar stays in the fridge from then on as a refrigerator pickle, not a shelf-stable preserve.
Okara, the soy pulp left over from making tofu, gives this porridge a nutty, hearty body that lets half a cup of rice make a filling pot, and anchovy stock adds savory depth underneath. The pulp goes in only once the rice is half softened, which lets the grains break down without the okara simmering for too long. Freshly ground soaked soybeans, for anyone making their own pulp, taste noticeably beanier than store-bought.
Seaweed stems are thick and springy and crunch audibly when you bite them. Salted stems vary a lot by brand, so after soaking, taste one strand and rinse again in fresh water if it is still too salty.
Thin beef, whether cut for galbi or bulgogi, spends at least an hour in a soy sauce and pear juice marinade and then needs only three to four minutes in total on a very hot grill. In that short time the marinade cooks down onto the surface into a glossy brown.
There is no chili flake or gochujang anywhere in this pot. Big dumplings cook in a clear anchovy and kelp stock flavored by shiitake, oyster mushrooms and napa cabbage, and any seasoning still needed at the end comes from salt alone so the broth stays pale. Some people finish the leftover broth with a scoop of rice.
With no chili flakes and no doenjang, just beef stock seasoned with soup soy sauce and salt, the broth stays clear. The tofu is nudged in with a ladle and left unstirred for five minutes to soak up the stock; browning it lightly in a pan first keeps a toasty surface even in the broth.
The small anchovies are toasted in a dry pan and set aside, while the garlic scapes cook first in the soy glaze; the fish only returns for the last couple of minutes so it stays crisp-chewy instead of hard. Scapes are never blanched, which keeps them bright green with a snap at the center.
Green cabbage leaves are thinner and firmer than napa, so they take salt quickly and turn tough rather than soft when left too long. Wide leaves and thick stems are cut to a similar size so one part does not finish salting before the other. The moment to stop salting is when a leaf bends but still snaps between the teeth. Draining matters more than it seems: leftover rinse water slides the chili paste off the leaves and thins the brine that forms later. Julienned carrot and scallion keep the color bright, and the jar moves to the fridge once liquid starts pooling after a short room-temperature ferment.
Young soybean leaves have a fresh, grassy aroma that sits well against gangdoenjang, a thick, salty soybean paste here cooked down with shiitake, onion, and garlic until it barely moves. That thickness is the point: a runny paste loosens the rice and leaks out of the leaf. The amount of rice is matched to each leaf, since they vary in size, and the parcels are set seam side down so they hold until serving.
Where most seaweed stem stir-fries finish with sesame oil, this one is cooked in perilla oil and coated in plenty of ground perilla seed, which pushes the nutty flavor right to the front. The salted stems soak in cold water for at least 15 minutes to draw out salt, but leave them much longer and the taste of the sea goes too.
Beef, bell pepper and onion alternate on soy-marinated skewers that are turned every two minutes for six to eight minutes. By the time the pepper edges are lightly charred, the glaze has reduced to a shine. They rest until the handles are cool enough to pick up.
Napa cabbage lines the bottom of the pot, and kimchi, blanched beef, tofu, enoki and frozen dumplings are arranged around it in separate blocks of color before anchovy stock with gochujang is poured over. A drop of perilla oil goes on just before it reaches the table.
Kelp flavors the soy broth only briefly and comes out before the eggs go in, since a long simmer turns it heavy and muddy. Whole garlic cloves braise alongside the quail eggs until soft and mellow, while a single Cheongyang chili joins in the final minutes to add a sharp edge without making the dish fiery. The eggs come out mahogany outside and seasoned toward the yolk, easy one-bite pieces for a lunchbox.
Raw cabbage and carrot are packed in unblanched, and the hot sweet-sour brine poured over them is what keeps the crunch a day later. Whole peppercorns give the brine a mild aromatic bite. Served cold beside burgers or tonkatsu, it cuts through fried food the way a sharp slaw does.
Piling bean sprouts high on the soaked rice and cooking them together lets their moisture seep into the grains, while the sprouts turn slightly translucent and still keep a little crunch. The rice itself is unseasoned; a soy sauce dressing with sesame oil, chili flakes, green onion and sesame seeds does all the work when spooned on and mixed in. Some cooks add julienned radish to soften the beany smell of the sprouts.
Snappy seaweed stems and springy shrimp end up in the same bite. Soup soy sauce is the only seasoning, with the rest of the salt coming from what is left in the stems, and the ground perilla seed is scattered over right after the heat goes off.
Songhwa mushrooms get a thin coat of perilla oil and soy sauce, then a sprinkle of ground perilla seed just before the heat goes off, layering the same nutty aroma twice. Their caps are thick, and generous slices hold together in the pan.
Store-bought frozen dumplings go straight into boiling anchovy stock without thawing, and in about five minutes they float. Many Korean families make this instead of tteokguk at Lunar New Year, and adding rice cakes turns it into tteok-manduguk.
Butterbur stems are sharply bitter, so they are peeled, blanched and then soaked in cold water for a full hour; after that only a pleasant, faint bitterness remains. Braised slowly in kelp stock with soy sauce and a little syrup, the stems absorb the seasoning all the way through and come out salty-sweet with a glossy surface. Sliced red chili at the end adds more color than heat.
Thick wedges cut along the grain are what let these onions stay crisp in soy brine for days; thin slices go limp fast. Sliced cheongyang chilies, a hot Korean green pepper, run some heat under the sweet-salty soy. The seasoning evens out after about three days in the fridge.
Bean sprouts simmer uncovered in anchovy stock for just 5 to 6 minutes, long enough to drive off their raw, grassy smell but short enough to keep them crunchy. This is the Jeonju style of kongnamul gukbap, a sprout soup poured over rice. An egg is slipped in whole rather than beaten, and it is ready when the white has set around a still-soft yolk. Seaweed flakes and a pinch of chili flakes go on top, and in Korea it is a common hangover meal.
Pork shoulder is browned until its fat runs, then seaweed stems join it for a quick toss. The roasted taste of the pork mixes with a smell of the sea, and the stems keep their snap.