217 recipes. Page 3 of 10
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The name comes from dombae, the Jeju word for cutting board, after the habit of slicing the boiled pork and serving it right on the board. Skin-on pork belly simmers gently in water seasoned with doenjang until the rind turns translucent and bouncy and the fat layers go soft enough to melt.
Cooked straight in the doenjang broth instead of a separate pot, thin somyeon take on the paste's flavor and lend the soup a little body. The bowl needs to reach the table the moment the heat goes off, before the fine noodles drink up the liquid. Potato, onion, and zucchini supply all the sweetness, making it an easy weeknight soup with a short ingredient list.
Korean garlic chives (buchu) are far sharper and more pungent than Western chives, and this side dish keeps them raw to hold on to that bite. Doenjang, a fermented soybean paste, clings to the flat leaves so every mouthful carries its salty depth, while vinegar lightens the finish and chili flakes leave a gentle heat. A 30-second rinse in cold water is enough, and longer soaking dulls the aroma. It is made right before the meal and belongs next to a bowl of rice.
Pounded and then minced, the red stem bases of mizu turn sticky and stringy, much like grated mountain yam, and are dressed with miso, mirin, soy sauce, and sugar. Mizu, formally uwabamiso, grows in colonies along clean mountain streams in Iwate's Ou and Kitakami ranges. The deeper the red at the base, the stronger the stickiness, while the watery stem keeps both crunch and a slippery feel. Tender spring and early-summer stems are the most prized. Serve it cold, on the day it is made.
Caramel made from 40 g of melted sugar loosened with cream goes into a brown-sugar butter dough, along with a tablespoon of sieved doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste. At roughly 1 to 2 percent of the dough, the doenjang stays behind the sweetness and leaves just a salty, fermented edge at the finish. Pressing the centers lightly right out of the oven makes them chewier.
Amaranth greens, their tough stem ends snapped off one by one with the fingers, are blanched for under a minute, squeezed hard and dressed with doenjang, soup soy sauce and perilla oil.
Tofu is mashed into the pot as it simmers and breaks down into the sauce, thickening this gangdoenjang, a reduced soybean-paste sauce for rice, without any starch. Zucchini, onion and shiitake are diced small, no bigger than 1 cm. Doenjang varies in saltiness, and the way to adjust is to mix more or less of the finished sauce into the rice.
Through the doenjang-fried pork comes the faintly earthy smell of Swiss chard. The leaves go limp as they cool, so it is eaten straight from the pan, spooned over rice.
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.
Everything in this napa cabbage doenjang soup is easy to find, and half a spoonful of gochujang gives the broth a reddish tint and a mild heat. Doenjang brands differ a lot in saltiness. The paste goes in light at first, and the pot is adjusted with more doenjang or water at the end.
Boiled radish greens and blanched loach simmer in anchovy stock seasoned with doenjang and gochujang, and three tablespoons of perilla seed powder at the end thicken it to something close to porridge. More radish greens push it toward bitter and chewy; more perilla powder makes it nuttier.
Once the shells go red and the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) broth has worked its way into every crack, the crab meat gets picked out and eaten over rice. The radish lining the bottom of the pot soaks up the crab too, so it is worth fishing out alongside.
Bittersweet spring aralia shoots sit on top of a doenjang broth thickened by potato and zucchini. The dish belongs to early spring, the short window when the shoots are in season. Pressing the doenjang through a sieve with a ladle keeps lumps out and the broth clean. As the potato simmers it partly breaks down, giving the soup body and a mild sweetness that sits well with the fermented soybean paste, and chewy knife-cut noodles stand up to that density. The shoots are blanched on their own and added near the end, because long simmering dulls the very fragrance the dish is built around.
Fried thick tofu (atsuage) and toasted white sesame are ground together into a thick dressing that clings to shredded daikon and carrot. The grinding goes on until no flecks of the tofu skin remain, which is what makes the coating smooth enough to wrap the fine shreds. It resembles shiraae, the Japanese tofu-dressed salad, in its nutty richness, but vinegar and Japanese mustard make it tart with a little nasal heat. Wringing the salted daikon and carrot out firmly in two or three goes keeps the coating thick after the vinegar is added and lets the vegetables keep their crunch. Thin diagonal slices of blanched snow peas add green against the white and orange.
Roasting broccoli coated in doenjang and gochujang at 200°C browns the floret edges and deepens the savory paste. A one-minute blanch leaves the stems bright green and still firm going into the oven, where the high heat finishes them.
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 doenjang is thinned with three tablespoons of water before it goes in, because boiled gondre (a wild mountain green) comes in tangled strands. Thinned paste can work its way between them. Tofu, browned separately in perilla oil, joins at the end.
Each kkwari pepper gets poked once or twice with a fork, then rolled around a dry pan for about 3 minutes until the skin wrinkles and spots brown. The doenjang sauce goes in only after that, for 2 minutes of tossing. As it cools, the seasoning tastes stronger.
It is a doenjang soup, but with less doenjang than usual. The clams are already salty, and too much paste would bury their flavor. A little zucchini and tofu round out the pot.
Chwinamul, a fragrant Korean wild green, keeps its aroma sharp above the earthy doenjang broth. It only needs 3 to 4 minutes; beyond that, the scent that gives the stew its point fades.
Jijim uses far less liquid than a stew, so by the end the dried radish greens (siraegi) are coated in a glossy doenjang (Korean soybean paste) sauce with almost no broth left. Stripping the tough outer fibers matters: skipped, the stems stay stringy however long they cook.
Freshwater fish simmered into a broth gives this noodle soup its savory base, and doenjang plus gochugaru keep any fishy edge in check while adding heat. Straining the stock two or three times through a fine sieve is what separates a clean, drinkable broth from a murky one.
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.
Peeled and sliced thin, the broccoli stem cooks in the same 1 minute 30 seconds as the florets and goes into the bowl with them, leaving nothing from the head to waste. Pull the broccoli while it is still bright and firm, because overcooked florets break apart as soon as the dressing is folded in.