165 recipes. Page 3 of 7
As an Amazon Associate, we may earn from qualifying purchases.
Pork marinated in fish sauce, sugar, and garlic and seared over high heat develops a caramelized brown edge while the inside stays juicy. In this southern Vietnamese bowl it goes, still warm, over chilled rice vermicelli and raw greens, and that hot-cold contrast is much of the pleasure. A sweet-sour dressing of lime juice and fish sauce ties meat, noodles, and vegetables together with no broth at all.
Nutty, faintly bitter buckwheat groats meet creamy avocado, and each fills in what the other lacks. Dill, a staple herb in Eastern European cooking where buckwheat is everyday food, adds a cool, grassy lift, while lemon juice keeps the grains from feeling heavy. Cucumber and cherry tomatoes bring the juiciness that keeps the bowl from turning dry or monotonous.
One pot does double duty: the water that poaches the chicken thighs becomes the cooking liquid for the rice. The heat stays low enough that only small bubbles rise at the edge, because a rolling boil splits and dries the meat.
The only heat involved is a 20-second dip for the seaweed, which is rinsed in cold water right after so it stops cooking. The broth is never heated either; it is soup soy sauce, vinegar and sugar topped up with cold water.
Refugees who reached Busan during the Korean War began making these noodles from wheat flour in place of naengmyeon, and milmyeon became the city's summer noodle. The noodles are softer than naengmyeon, with a moderate chew; the usual way is to sip the ice-edged beef broth first, then cut the noodles with scissors. That chew comes from plunging them into cold water the moment they are drained and rubbing off the starch. The gochujang is loosened with a little cold broth beforehand so it spreads without lumps. Spooned into the center, it melts a spicy kick into the cold broth, and cucumber and Korean pear add crunch and sweetness.
Crisp, honey-sweet chamoe (yellow Korean melon) and cucumber make a cold summer salad dressed with ground perilla seeds. The perilla powder thickens the lemon dressing and gives it a nutty, almost toasty depth, a flavor Koreans know from perilla noodle soups. Shredded perilla leaves go in last for a second, fresher layer of the same plant, and the melon tastes sweeter the colder it is.
Toasted iriko (dried sardines), sesame and peanuts are pounded with miso, browned under the grill, then whisked into cold bonito stock until it is stronger than everyday miso soup. Torn tofu, cucumber, shiso, myoga and ginger float in it, and it is ladled over freshly cooked, hot barley rice. In Miyazaki it is said to have grown out of a farmhouse habit of putting raw miso and water on barley rice on hot days.
The gochujang and vinegar broth goes into the freezer for about an hour and is poured over the bowl while still slushy. That keeps everything cold to the last spoonful without a pile of ice cubes thinning the seasoning. Raw flatfish sits on shredded pear, cucumber and cabbage, and with nothing here touching heat, the fish should be sold for raw eating, kept cold, and served the moment the bowl is put together.
Hot, just-seared brisket lands on cold, chewy jjolmyeon, and every bite mixes warm beef fat with a tangy gochujang dressing. The brisket goes into a dry pan and only browns at the edges, which keeps the marbling in the slices instead of rendering it away. Jjolmyeon are dense, elastic wheat noodles that hold a sticky sauce well, but any water left on them or on the soaked cabbage and cucumber thins that coating fast.
A gochujang dressing sweetened with maple syrup gives bulgur, the cracked wheat of Middle Eastern tabbouleh, a Korean turn. Corn charred in a dry pan until spotted brown adds concentrated sweetness to soften the chili heat, while cucumber and cherry tomatoes keep it fresh. The grains keep absorbing the dressing as they sit, so leftovers taste even fuller the next day.
The rice is spread out in the bowls and left to steam off for about three minutes before the cucumber, lettuce, perilla leaves and flounder go on. Straight onto hot rice, the fish would turn lukewarm. Half the cho-gochujang, a sweet-sour chili sauce, is drizzled on for the first mix, and the rest goes in to taste.
On a hot day this takes the soup's place on the Korean table. Thin cucumber slices sit in a sharp broth where vinegar leads, and ice goes in right before serving so it arrives very cold.
Chogye guksu gets its broth from the same pot that poaches the chicken: the stock is chilled, then sharpened with vinegar and Korean hot mustard until it tastes tart, icy, and slightly nose-tingling. The mustard waits until the stock is fully cold, because warm liquid drives off its volatile aroma. The chicken breast is shredded only after it cools completely, since tearing it hot lets the juices run out and leaves dry strands. Thin matchsticks of cucumber and radish add crunch, and cut to the same width they twirl up evenly with the noodles. It is a summer dish for days when appetite runs low.
Cheongpomuk, a soft, translucent jelly made from mung bean starch, is cut into batons and tossed in chojang, Korean sweet-and-sour chili sauce. Crisp apple, cucumber, and red cabbage play against the jelly's smooth, bouncy texture, and the apple's sweetness rounds off the chili heat.
Instead of the usual cho-gochujang, this raw fish bowl is dressed with ssamjang loosened with vinegar and sesame oil, and the taste leans toward savory fermented soybean rather than sweet heat. The vegetables are not dressed ahead, and the bowl gets only two or three turns when it is mixed.
Peanut butter does the heavy lifting in this sauce, with sesame oil supplying the sesame aroma, so the dish comes together without hunting down Chinese sesame paste. Soy, vinegar, sugar, and chili oil turn it sweet, salty, tart, and gently hot all at once. The noodles get a short ice bath that firms them up, and julienned cucumber and scallion cut through the dense coating. A cold, fast bowl for hot weather.
A dressing of nothing more than lime juice and olive oil cuts cleanly through creamy avocado. Golden pan-seared chicken breast supplies lean substance, romaine and cucumber bring crunch against the soft avocado, and cherry tomatoes add a sharp, juicy note. Sliced hot, the chicken loses its juices to the cutting board and turns dry, and a rest on a plate before cutting prevents that. Avocado works the other way: it browns as it sits and is sliced only just before the dressing goes on. The result is a simple American-style salad that eats as a full meal, and lemon stands in well when there is no lime.
Rice seasoned with sesame oil, salt and toasted sesame is spread on plastic wrap, filled with tuna mayo and squeezed into a ball. A little finely chopped carrot and cucumber goes into the filling as well. These are eaten without reheating, which is why they go into lunchboxes and come along on picnics and school sports days.
Deodeok, a bittersweet mountain root sometimes called bonnet bellflower, gets pounded with a rolling pin and torn into shreds before it joins chewy jjolmyeon noodles. Tearing instead of slicing keeps its fibrous grain, so it brings a slightly woody chew and an herbal fragrance to the sweet-sour gochujang dressing. Cabbage, carrot, and cucumber are soaked in cold water for crunch, and everything is tossed together only right before eating so the vegetables stay crisp.
Rinsed quickly under cold water, quinoa loses its natural coating of bitter saponins and tastes clean and nutty. Cooled quinoa, seared chicken breast, romaine, cucumber, and bell pepper come together under a lemony Greek yogurt dressing, and the result eats more like a grain bowl than a side salad.
The sauce holds just a teaspoon of gochujang, and what comes through is mostly soy sauce and sesame oil rather than heat. Cucumber, avocado, seaweed salad and chilled cubes of tuna sit in separate sections over brown rice, with the sauce drizzled on right before eating.
Dongchimi, a mild radish water kimchi, gives this Gangwon-style buckwheat noodle bowl its broth, chilled in the freezer until almost slushy so the clean, lactic tang comes through at its sharpest. There is almost no fat in the bowl, making it a natural follow-up to rich pork dishes like samgyeopsal or boiled suyuk.
Chwinamul, a leafy Korean mountain green, gets only a 20-second blanch and an ice bath; left longer in boiling water, it loses both its herbal bitterness and its bright green color. Julienned apple and cucumber bring sweetness and juice, and thin red onion, soaked first in cold water, adds a sharp edge that keeps the plate light. The dressing loosens doenjang (Korean soybean paste) with lemon juice and thickens it with perilla oil into a nutty, tart coating rather than anything soup-like, and a salty doenjang can be thinned with a little water. The apple is cut last, after everything else is ready, to keep browning down. It sits somewhere between a seasoned namul side dish and a fruit salad, tastes clearest served cold, and is most fragrant with freshly harvested spring chwinamul.
The sea squirt goes on last, over rice already topped with cucumber and lettuce, and everything is turned over with the vinegared gochujang only a few broad times right before eating. The longer it is mixed, the more of its briny aroma is lost. Even drying the rinsed sea squirt is gentle: a paper towel pressed on top, never rubbed.