115 recipes. Page 1 of 5
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Hot dashi poured over a potato-starch crust starts softening it right away: the edges turn tender while the middle stays crisp only briefly. That brief contrast is the whole point, and the tofu goes from the oil to the bowl and straight to the table.
Steamed cabbage leaves wrap around pan-cooked chicken tenderloin, and slicing the rolls 2-3 cm thick shows a white center inside green layers. Both the chicken and the cabbage are mild, so the ssamjang served alongside, a thick Korean dipping paste, carries most of the flavor. Pressing the thick cabbage ribs flat before steaming lets the leaves roll without splitting.
Clam meat, julienned radish and shiitake cook on top of rice in kombu water, and the finished pot gets mixed with a soy, sesame oil and scallion sauce at the table. The radish steams over the rice and sweetens it, and cutting it thin (0.3 cm) lets it finish at the same time as the rice. The soaked rice has to drain well, since the kombu water is measured for rice without surface water. The clams go on only near the end so they stay plump.
Between the slightly bitter bangpung namul, a spring green also called sea breeze herb, and the sweetness of shrimp seasoned with mirin, the dish needs little more than a tablespoon of soy sauce. The spring leaves are thin, so they go in last with the soy and come off the heat while still bright green.
Chicken hearts are springy to bite and taste nuttier the longer you chew. Trimming off the vessels and soaking them in milk takes care of the organ smell. Three or four go on each skewer with a soy and gochujang glaze, and they come off the heat as soon as the cut center turns from pink to grey, before they toughen.
Inner skirt has coarse muscle fibers with tough sinew running between them, so the first job is snipping that sinew out with scissors and slicing across the grain. Its beefy flavor is strong enough that the soy marinade gets only 20 minutes. Halved garlic cloves cook slowly in the pan first, then the same pan goes to high heat for a quick sear of the beef, and the garlic is plated alongside.
Mussels go in by the potful here, 900 g of them. Once the water with radish and garlic is boiling, the mussels are tipped in, and when they open and the broth turns milky, the chili flakes and soup soy sauce follow. Any that stay shut at the end get thrown out.
Peeled quail eggs turn chestnut brown on the outside while the yolks stay bright yellow. Reducing the soy glaze all the way makes them too salty. Stop while a shallow pool of sauce remains. A sliced cheongyang chili, a sharp Korean green chili, adds a little heat at the end, and a night in the fridge lets the seasoning sink in further.
No stock goes into the pot: 500 g of mussels and some radish make the whole broth. The mussels give up a concentrated sea flavor, the radish adds a clean sweetness, and soup soy sauce with cooking wine smooths out the salt the shellfish bring. Each mussel is lifted out as soon as its shell opens and the meat waits on the side until the bowls are filled, which keeps it from toughening. Any that stay shut after cooking are thrown away rather than forced open. Straining slowly through a fine sieve removes sand and shell bits so the broth poured over the noodles stays clear, and garlic with green onion clears away what fishiness remains.
Raw peanuts in their thin skins and thick arame seaweed simmer in plain water for about an hour, and the sugar, soy sauce, and mirin are added only after a peanut splits easily under a finger, since soy sauce reduces faster than a firm center softens. This keeping side dish from the Atsumi Peninsula in Aichi finishes with almost no loose sauce, just a glossy coat on the peanuts and seaweed.
Soy sauce does not cook the crab in ganjang gejang, which is why only crab sold for raw consumption belongs in this Korean soy-marinated dish. The brine, simmered with apple, ginger, whole garlic, and scallion, has to be chilled to 4°C or below all the way through before it is poured over the crabs; warm liquid changes the texture of the raw meat.
Eggplant and ground pork are stir-fried in green onion oil, then piled, oil and all, on top of the soaked rice, so the eggplant cooks with the rice while soaking up the pork fat and onion aroma. Cut it thick, about 1.5 cm, and pull it off the heat before it goes limp, or it collapses once the rice is done. Soy sauce splashed onto the hot edge of the pan adds a slightly smoky note.
The bell pepper is cut to roughly the size of the shrimp, so shrimp, broccoli and pepper land evenly in each bite. Seasoning is a tablespoon each of soy and oyster sauce, with five sliced garlic cloves fried in the oil first.
Soy sauce and sugar replace the usual red gochujang, so the rice cakes taste like Korean soy-marinated galbi rather than spicy street tteokbokki. The marinated boneless pork rib is seared hard first, then water lifts the browned glaze off the pan and carries the meat flavor into the sauce.
Thin pork belly is wrapped tightly around each asparagus spear, and the rolls go into the pan seam side down. While the fat renders and crisps the outside, the asparagus steams inside and keeps some snap. Wipe the rendered fat out of the pan before adding the sauce, or the soy and syrup glaze will slide around instead of clinging.
Dotted gizzard shad (baendaengi) has fine, soft bones that soften further in the braise, so the fish is eaten bones and all. It is layered with onion over a bed of radish and braised in a gochujang and soy sauce for close to half an hour.
No broth at all: hot, thick noodles are tossed with chili-oil pork, chives, scallion, fish powder, and a raw yolk until everything coats the strands. The noodles skip the cold rinse so they reach the bowl hot and the yolk loosens into a sauce. The pork must be cooked down until no thin liquid remains in the pan; otherwise water pools at the bottom and the mix turns uneven. Spreading the toppings in a ring instead of one pile keeps the flavor from bunching up when everything is mixed. Fish powder and nori bring the savory depth a soup would normally supply.
Egg beaten with a generous amount of dashi and steamed in individual cups sets into a soft, trembling custard that is savory, not sweet. It firms at the edges while the center still wobbles, with the broth flavor up front. Shrimp, sliced shiitake and ginkgo nuts sit at the bottom, and each spoonful turns up something different.
Medium dried anchovies are toasted in a dry pan for a minute before any sauce touches them, which drives off moisture and fishy smell and keeps them crunchy under the glaze. Once the anchovies are in the sauce, the coating takes under 2 minutes, and any longer sets the glaze hard.
Chunks of cutlassfish (galchi), seasoned for ten minutes with soy sauce and ginger, sit on the very top of the pot as the rice cooks. After resting, the flesh falls apart at the touch of a paddle. The scallions are scattered over and everything is folded together with a light hand.
A single cheongyang chili, a hot Korean green pepper, goes into this soy-glazed fish cake. The fish cake is cut into long, thin strips and browned over high heat before any sauce goes near it, and the soy seasoning then goes on so briefly that almost none is left in the pan.
The soy and honey glaze goes on in two rounds, so the bollak, a small Korean rockfish, comes out with a dark, glossy brown skin. The fish is lean and dries out quickly, so keep the grilling short.
Pork shoulder has fat running evenly through it, so it braises tender and pulls apart along the grain without drying out. The garlic chives on top are only just wilted and get picked up with each bite of soy-braised pork.
In Miyazaki, chicken breast fried in an egg coating is dipped into warm, sweet-sour nanban vinegar and then topped with cold tartar sauce. Unlike ordinary fried chicken, the coating ends up moist rather than crisp. The tartar sauce has chopped boiled egg, cucumber and onion in it, enough to give it some crunch.