165 recipes. Page 5 of 7
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Thick black-bean sauce made from chunjang (Korean fermented black bean paste) coats chewy wheat noodles, with diced pork, onion, potato and zucchini giving it body. Simmering until the potato turns half translucent lets the vegetables sweeten the salty paste. In Korea it is the go-to delivery meal on moving day or after a graduation, and it tastes best mixed the moment the hot sauce lands on the noodles.
Chickpeas roasted at 200 degrees until crisp play the part of croutons in this bowl of kale, red cabbage, carrot and cucumber. The gochujang dressing, rounded out with maple syrup and rice vinegar, brings heat, sweetness and acidity at once and covers the grassy taste of the raw vegetables. Massaging the kale by hand for a minute softens its tough fibers and takes the edge off its bitterness.
Thick, springy jjolmyeon noodles get tossed in a sweet, sour and spicy dressing of gochujang, vinegar and sugar. Cabbage and cucumber soaked in cold water stay crisp against the heat, while a halved boiled egg rounds things out. The noodle is said to have started in the 1970s as a production mistake at a noodle factory in Incheon.
Springy canned sea snails (golbaengi) are tossed with cucumber, onion and scallion in a hot, sour and sweet sauce of gochujang, chili flakes, vinegar and sugar, a classic drinking snack in Korea. A 5-minute soak in cold water takes the harsh edge off the onion so it blends into the sauce. The snails drain well in a sieve first, as leftover brine from the can thins the sauce until it no longer clings. The plate goes to the table right away: once dressed, the salt starts drawing water out of the vegetables. Spooned over thin somyeon noodles, it becomes golbaengi somyeon, with the noodles soaking up the dressing.
Juice from well-fermented kimchi, stretched with water and balanced with sugar and vinegar, becomes a chilled sweet-sour broth for thin somen. Since nearly all the flavor comes from the kimchi, young kimchi leaves the broth flat and short on tang. Chopped kimchi and cucumber strips on top add crunch to a light summer bowl.
Grapefruit segments and a yuja marmalade dressing layer two kinds of citrus, one juicy and tart, the other floral. Thin ribbons of shiso, with their minty, herbal edge, tidy up any fishiness from the shrimp, while cucumber and radish supply crunch. Served cold, every element tastes sharper.
Cooked white soybeans blended with sesame seeds make a thick, nutty soy milk that is chilled and poured over somen. Skimming off the loose skins while rinsing the beans keeps bitterness out of the broth, and one pass through a sieve removes the gritty bits for a much silkier soup. Seasoning splits between salt alone and salt with a little sugar, added a pinch at a time either way. The soup needs at least 1 hour in the fridge and is blended well ahead, since ice cubes in the bowl would only thin it. The noodles get a rub in cold water and a short dip in ice water to firm them up.
Tomatoes and cucumber stay in big, rough chunks, so each bite keeps its own juice and crunch. Sweet bell pepper, briny olives and salty feta layer on top, and the oil and red wine vinegar are tossed in only until the vegetables look glossy. Thin slices of red onion keep its sharpness from covering the tomato, olives and feta. In Greece the feta traditionally sits on the salad as a single slab rather than crumbled; broken off bit by bit at the table, it mixes with the olive oil on the plate and becomes the dressing. Rough tossing crushes the tomatoes and leaves a pool of watery juice underneath.
Chilled buckwheat noodles get tossed with fine shreds of cucumber, red cabbage, and carrot that outweigh the noodles, and the result eats more like a salad than a noodle bowl. The dressing is gochujang thinned with vinegar, soy sauce, and a little sesame oil: spicy, sour, and savory at once. Rubbing the cooked noodles under cold water strips their surface starch, which keeps them from clumping and stops the dressing from pooling at the bottom of the bowl. The toss happens right before serving and the bowl spends only 5 minutes in the fridge, because buckwheat softens quickly once dressed. It makes a light meal on a hot day.
King oyster mushrooms sliced lengthwise and seared in a dry pan turn golden outside and stay chewy inside, giving this salad its meaty bite. Perilla oil, nutty and slightly grassy, meets lemon juice in the dressing so a light acidity lifts the browned mushrooms. Shredded perilla leaves bring a sharp herbal aroma that fades quickly once dressed. The bowl is best eaten soon after tossing.
Equal measures of soy sauce and vinegar give this Gangwon-style dressing its sour edge, with gochugaru for heat and a little sugar to round it off. Finely chopped kimchi clings to the noodles instead of sitting in clumps, adding fermented tang and crunch to every bite. With little gluten to hold them together, buckwheat noodles snap apart when boiled past the package time or pressed down while mixing. The dressing is folded in by lifting from below. Several rinses in cold water wash off the surface starch that would make the strands stick together. Water left on the rinsed noodles thins the dressing fast, which makes thorough draining as important as the chill.
Mackerel, grilled until the skin crackles, is broken into big flakes while still warm and piled onto cold romaine and perilla leaves. The dressing is soy sauce with yuja (Korean citron) marmalade and sesame oil, and its sweet-tart citrus sits well with the oily fish.
Pan-fried mackerel and stir-fried mukeunji, kimchi aged until deeply sour, turn a bowl of spicy mixed noodles into something closer to a full meal. Salting the fish and blotting away the liquid it releases keeps the fishy smell down.
Hot mustard hits the nose first, then the vinegar's tartness follows and leaves the mouth feeling cool and clean. The jellyfish is sliced thinly along the grain to match the cucumber and bell pepper strips. The dish is chilled in the fridge and eaten right away, before warmth can soften its crunchy snap. Familiar as a starter at Chinese restaurants in Korea, it is easy to make at home with ready-to-use jellyfish that has already been desalted and cooked according to the package.
The broth for this bowl goes into the freezer just long enough to form thin ice crystals, so the first sip is slushy and sharply cold. Firm buckwheat noodles sit in it with julienned cucumber and pickled radish for crunch and half a boiled egg for softness. Vinegar, mustard, and sugar are stirred in a little at a time, letting each person set the sour and pungent edge of their own bowl.
Soft rehydrated wakame and lightly salted cucumber slices sit in a cold, sweet-sour dressing of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and sesame oil. The recipe is built around plain dried cut wakame that only needs soaking, so there is no blanching step. Salted wakame or a ready-made seaweed salad from the chiller case will not give the same result, since their texture and seasoning differ.
Myeongi jangajji (wild garlic leaves pickled in soy) is sliced into the bowl, and its pickling liquid loosens the gochujang into a sauce for chilled udon. The garlicky smell of the leaves comes through the heat, and shredded cucumber and tuna go on top.
Tomato, cucumber and red onion are diced to half a centimeter or smaller, so a single spoonful carries juice, crunch and bite in equal measure. With only lemon juice, olive oil and salt as dressing, the ripeness of the tomatoes decides almost everything.
Without gochujang in the mix, the toasty, nutty perilla oil carries this buckwheat makguksu, dressed with just soy sauce, vinegar, and a little allulose syrup. With such a simple dressing, any water pooling under the noodles dilutes it immediately.
Warm, earthy cumin and the salty tang of chaat masala sit on top of lime juice, giving plain cucumber and tomato an unmistakably Indian taste. Scooping out some of the seedy centers keeps the vegetables from weeping into the dressing. Finely diced red onion soaked in cold water for 3 minutes loses its sharp bite, and it is drained in a sieve rather than squeezed. Cilantro is chopped together with its tender stems, which carry more aroma than the leaves alone. Left for about 15 minutes before serving, the vegetables trade flavors and the bowl tastes more of a piece.
Unlike the glossy, starch-thickened black bean noodles found in Korean Chinese restaurants, this Beijing version gets its body purely from reduction: pork and fermented bean paste cook down until a spatula leaves a brief trail through the sauce. Doenjang mixed into the sweet bean paste pushes the flavor toward salty and funky, with a spoonful of sugar to soften the edge. The thick sauce sits on chewy fresh wheat noodles alongside crisp cucumber and bean sprouts, all tossed together hard right before eating.
Mayonnaise thinned with rice vinegar and lemon juice gives this Japanese imitation-crab salad a creamy coating that does not feel heavy. Crab stick pulled into thin shreds along the grain mixes with matchsticks of cucumber and carrot and takes the dressing evenly, and with no cooking involved it comes together in minutes.
Black soybeans (seoritae) turn this chilled noodle soup a soft gray, and their nuttiness runs deeper than the ivory broth made from ordinary yellow soybeans, with a clean finish. The cooked beans are cooled completely before blending so their nutty aroma is not lost. Milk blended in with the cold water gives the broth a rounder, creamier feel, and salt is the only seasoning. Pressing the broth through a fine strainer removes bits of skin for a smooth, drinkable texture, and an hour in the fridge before serving deepens the flavor. Served in cups over thin somyeon with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and ice, it works as a single-portion take on kongguksu, the Korean summer noodle dish.
Okara (soy pulp) is dry-toasted until crumbly, then mixed with vinegar-cured sardine, salted cucumber and carrot, and sweet simmered fried tofu, all held together by a thick peanut and miso dressing. The dish comes from the Boso coast of Chiba, and each portion is squeezed by hand into a small rice-bale shape. Store-bought okara added straight from the pack carries too much water and turns the mix soggy, which is why it is toasted first. The salted vegetables and the vinegar-rinsed sardine also need to be well drained, or the shaped bales slump. Toasty okara, salty fish, sweet vinegared miso and yuzu peel land in a single bite.