217 recipes. Page 1 of 10
Doenjang is Korean fermented soybean paste. Look for "Doenjang" or "Korean Soybean Paste" when buying it for these recipes.
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Use the Korean name to distinguish doenjang from miso at the store. The manufacturer describes doenjang as having a deeper, more robust flavor than miso. They are not identical seasonings.
Choose the recipe before measuring: a pot of soup, a thick stew and a vegetable dressing need different amounts. Follow that recipe rather than treating a spoonful of paste as a fixed serving. The recipes below use doenjang in different cooking steps.
Salmon, cabbage, onion, shimeji mushrooms, green pepper and carrot are sealed in foil with a sweet miso sauce and a pat of butter, then steamed in a covered frying pan. The dish is a local specialty of the Ishikari area of Hokkaido. Inside the parcel, steam wilts the vegetables while butter, miso and the juices of the salmon and vegetables pool into a salty sauce at the bottom.
A small spoonful of doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, goes into the brown sugar caramel spread under the apples, but the aim is for it to sit behind the sweetness as a faint salty, savory depth rather than taste like doenjang. Pea-sized bits of butter left in the dough make the crust bake up flaky, and the cinnamon apples soften in the oven.
Thick-walled and mild, asakigochu peppers need only 20 seconds in boiling water to lose their raw smell while keeping their crunch. The dressing is doenjang and gochujang with a little vinegar. Use cheongyang chilies in the same sauce and the dish turns much hotter.
Toasting the rice in sesame oil first keeps its starch from rushing out all at once, and the porridge sticks to the pot less. The doenjang (Korean soybean paste) is pushed through a fine sieve into anchovy broth, and finely chopped napa cabbage and onion melt into the rice over 20-plus minutes at a low simmer.
Thin-sliced beef brisket goes into a dry pan first, and the fat it renders cooks the garlic, onion and zucchini. If the brisket gives off plenty, the cooking oil can be cut back. It is a side for rice, or spooned over a hot bowl of it as a quick rice bowl.
Pork large intestine is stuffed with glutinous rice, pork blood, blanched mung bean sprouts and napa cabbage, and doenjang, then steamed into a thick sundae that cuts into broad, heavy slices. The casing is filled only about 80 percent to leave room for the rice to swell, and the cooked sundae cools completely before slicing, or the filling squeezes out.
Grated yuzu zest and juice, fresh ginger, and miso go into the sweet rice dough, so each piece tastes salty and citrusy as well as sweet. The rice flours are added all at once to the hot yuzu-miso liquid, which cooks them into a dough right in the pot. Each of the 15 portions is wrapped in a food-grade bamboo sheath and steamed. Pieces that firm up soften again when unwrapped and warmed in the microwave or a pan.
Instead of lettuce or perilla, this ssam uses napa cabbage leaves charred briefly on a grill, which pick up smoke and sweetness while the inner ribs keep their crunch. That crunch is what lets a leaf wrap around grilled pork belly without tearing. A doenjang-based ssamjang adds salty, fermented depth to the pork fat and cabbage sweetness, and a lightly grilled chili tucked in brings heat.
The zucchini is cut into thick half-moons, so it keeps its shape in the soup and releases a little sweetness when you bite into it. For more of a kick, slice in a cheongyang chili, a sharp Korean green pepper.
Siraegi, dried radish greens that have been boiled and stripped of their tough skins, still show their fibers after frying, a rustic chew unlike softer vegetable pancakes. The batter starts with doenjang (soybean paste) dissolved in cold water, plus some buckwheat flour, which makes it look a little rough; that is how it should look. The paste brings enough salt that none is added.
This monkfish stew lands between a clear soup and a heavily seasoned jjigae, with a cloudier, bolder broth than either and large pieces of firm fish. A small spoonful of doenjang tames the fish's odor, and gelatin from under the monkfish skin melts into the pot and thickens the broth with no starch.
Doenjang and a pinch of instant coffee in the boiling water soften the porky smell without seasoning the meat itself. Five minutes in the broth after the heat goes off keeps the slices moist, and kimchi and fresh wrap leaves supply the seasoning at the table.
Laid on a spoonful of hot rice, one of these peppers delivers salty, funky soybean paste and lingering heat in a single bite. Pricking each Cheongyang chili all over with a fork lets the doenjang brine reach the inside instead of sitting on the skin.
Only the foam gets skimmed from this doenjang broth, and the brisket fat left in gives the soybean-paste soup a rich, beefy body. Onion, zucchini, and oyster mushrooms simmer before the meat goes in, and their sweetness softens the salty, fermented edge of the paste. The final adjustment comes from soup soy sauce rather than more paste, since doenjang brands differ in saltiness. The thick knife-cut noodles cook right in the pot rather than separately, thickening the broth with their starch and giving it a heavier, almost creamy feel. If the soup reduces until it turns too cloudy or salty, 100 ml of water and one more boil set it right.
Like risotto, orzo stirred through vegetable stock turns creamy and spoonable, all in one pot. The clams are added near the end and open right in the pot, letting their briny juice mix with doenjang, the Korean fermented soybean paste that seasons it all.
Bomdong, a flat, open-leaf cabbage harvested from winter into early spring, has sweet, crunchy leaves that pair surprisingly well with strawberries. The link is a doenjang dressing: Korean soybean paste loosened with olive oil, lemon juice, and honey, salty and nutty without being heavy. Because doenjang varies a lot in saltiness from brand to brand, the dressing goes on in portions, tasted as you go. The leaves are torn by hand rather than cut to keep their natural shape, then dried well, since leftover water thins the dressing. Strawberries sit on top of the greens instead of in the dressing, which would make them weep juice, and walnuts and sesame add a toasty note that bridges the fruit and the paste.
In the Reihoku area of Fukui, this was set out for meals without meat or fish: Hoonko, the big Jodo Shinshu observance, and funerals and memorial services. Fu, a light and porous wheat gluten, drinks the mustard vinegar miso right through, so each bite gives off sharp mustard and sweet miso together.
Salted caramel works because salt lifts sugar, and these mini tarts take the idea further by stirring a little doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, into the caramel alongside the salt. Taken off the heat before it reaches a deep amber, the caramel stays merely sweet and the doenjang disappears. Toasted pecans are coated in it and piled into the shells, and the tarts set at room temperature into a firm top that cracks under a fork.
Mallow usually ends up in doenjang soup in Korean kitchens; blanched and dressed instead, its soft leaves turn slippery and hold onto the fermented paste. Too long in the water and the mucilage loosens until the leaves clump into a slick mass, while too short leaves a grassy smell behind.
Pearled glutinous barley and white rice are cooked in equal amounts, so each spoonful is soft like plain rice but punctuated by springy barley grains. The sauce decides the bowl's character: garlicky gang-doenjang, a thick simmered soybean paste, makes it savory and salty, while gochujang leans sweeter and spicier.
With nothing but napa cabbage, doenjang, garlic, perilla oil and sesame seeds, the cabbage's own sweetness comes through. Take it off the heat while the thick ribs still have a little crunch.
Two kinds of salt meet in each shell here: the briny juice of the hard clam and the fermented saltiness of doenjang. That is why the paste goes on thin enough to let the clam meat show through; doenjang varies in saltiness from brand to brand, and a heavy coat buries the shellfish. Over high heat the doenjang surface scorches lightly and turns toasty, and the moment the liquid in the shell bubbles, the clams come off. Another minute and the meat turns tough.
Along Korea's west and south coasts, where mallow and clams are both easy to find, the two have long shared a pot of doenjang soup. The mallow is rubbed between the hands as it is washed, which gives the broth a little body, and the finished soup is usually eaten with rice stirred in.
Mallow leaves turn this doenjang broth silky: their natural mucilage thickens the liquid so it clings to the spoon. Peeling the stringy stem skins and kneading out the green juice keeps the leaves from tasting grassy.