115 recipes. Page 3 of 5
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Halved garlic cloves go into the pan first and lose their raw bite, turning sweet and soft. The gizzards get nothing but salt and pepper, which leaves the garlic to do the work of a sauce.
Glossy braised kelp should have a springy, almost jelly-like bite that snaps cleanly. That spring is decided at the soaking stage: take the kelp out when it bends easily rather than by the clock, because kelp left too long in the water goes soft.
King oyster mushrooms are cut lengthwise into thick planks and scored in a crosshatch, which gives them enough heft to stand in for meat over rice. They are seared in a dry pan first to drive off water, then glazed with soy sauce, cooking wine and sugar, and they stay chewy under the sauce.
Flakes of green gamtae are scattered through a glazed stir-fry of tiny anchovies and sliced almonds, giving a familiar banchan an extra sea smell. Gamtae is a seaweed from Korea's southern coast, milder and less bitter than sea lettuce.
Cheek meat comes from a muscle that works constantly. Its grain is fine and dense and the collagen gives a springy chew. Fat and lean alternate across each slice, with richness shifting from bite to bite.
Long simmering turns the cartilage and tendons of beef knee translucent and soft, and the broth becomes rich enough to set like aspic once it cools. A hard boil clouds the broth, so most of the craft lies in holding the pot at a gentle bubble. In Korea it is mostly a winter dish.
Strips of beef round marinate in soy sauce and cooking wine for 10 minutes, get stir-fried with burdock and carrot, and then the soaked rice is toasted in the same pot before the water goes in. The marinade carries over into the rice, so no sauce is served on the side. The burdock, soaked briefly in vinegar water first, still has its crunch after cooking.
Only soy sauce, cooking wine and garlic season it, and lightly, so the sweetness of Korean zucchini (aehobak) and the shrimp come first. It holds up well at room temperature.
Under foil in a 180°C oven, the ribs first cook through and soften, then come uncovered at higher heat so the soy and honey glaze turns glossy. Splitting it into two stages tenderizes the meat near the bone before the surface has a chance to burn.
This is better ten minutes after it comes off the heat than right away; as it cools, the potatoes keep drinking in the soy sauce until they are seasoned all the way through.
A whole salmon fillet cooks right on top of the soaked rice, and only after resting is it broken into big flakes and folded through. The finish is soy sauce, a knob of butter, and lemon juice, which makes the rice rich and savory with a bright edge. Thick fillets can still be underdone at the center when the rice is ready. A thermometer reading of 63°C at the thickest point is the signal to stop.
One bite brings the springy head of webfoot octopus (jjukkumi), its chewy suckered legs and crunchy soybean sprouts. With plenty of gochugaru and cheongyang chilies on top of that, it is properly hot.
Pork skirt comes from the diaphragm. The coarse grain gives a firm chew, and the meat is cut across it. Browning tells you when to turn the pieces, not when they are done; that is decided by the center of the thickest piece reaching 63°C.
Gochugaru and fresh cheongyang chili together make the broth properly hot. The radish is already half cooked when the flounder goes on top, and it ends up absorbing the fat that seeps from the fish as well as the seasoning.
The abalone flesh is stir-fried in butter with garlic scapes, while the innards cut away from it get a light toss in soy sauce and go on top of rice. Past a minute the flesh turns tough; it spends only about 45 seconds in the pan.
Chicken thighs go into a gochujang marinade, ideally overnight. On the day, the skin side is pressed into the pan first to render the fat, then the pieces are flipped and covered so the thick meat cooks through. The glaze only turns glossy at the very end, in the last 2 minutes over high heat with the lid off.
There is no salting the eggplant to draw out water. It softens on its own under the lid, in the same pot as browned pork shoulder, and picks up the rendered fat along with the soy and chili, which makes it far richer than eggplant braised alone.
Bamboo shoots sliced thinly across the grain stay crisp and outweigh the beef, and the dish eats more like a vegetable stir-fry with soy-marinated meat running through it. Beef round is very lean and toughens quickly, which is why the meat is seared briefly, lifted out, and only returned for a final toss once the bamboo has cooked down on its own.
Pear juice makes up close to half of the marinade for these gochujang pork ribs. It is what makes them tender, and it is also why they scorch so easily. The ribs marinate for an hour or two, cook over medium heat, and get the leftover sauce brushed on only at the very end.
In Jeju, galchi-jorim is made with plenty of liquid, close to a stew, and rice gets mixed into whatever sauce is left. Potato goes under the fish along with the radish, another Jeju habit, and its starch gives the sauce some body.
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.
Pork jowl goes into the pan with no oil at all. Its own fat runs out within moments, and the doenjang marinade sizzles in it and browns onto the meat. The doenjang starts at a single tablespoon and goes up only after tasting.
Skate flesh is threaded with soft cartilage, which gives it a pleasant chew. It braises in a gochugaru and soy liquid over heat low enough that the surface barely moves, almost steaming.
Instead of being stirred into liquid, the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) is fried at the edge of the pan in the fat from the pork, which cooks off its pasty smell, before the blanched cauliflower goes in. There is no broth at all, and the heat goes off while the cauliflower stems still have a little firmness.