217 recipes. Page 8 of 10
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A full 120g of water parsley (minari) turns an everyday doenjang stew green and sharply aromatic, with a peppery, grassy bite against the fermented soybean broth. The minari simmers for only 2 minutes and comes off the heat while the stems are still crisp, not limp and stringy.
Pork spine bones simmer for about two hours into a cloudy, rich stock, then blanched cabbage greens (ugeoji) rubbed with doenjang and chili join the pot for an earthy, spicy depth. Cubes of seonji, congealed blood, are added near the end and warmed by ladling broth over them rather than stirring, so they hold their shape.
The shepherd's purse goes in roots and all, because the roots carry its earthy, bitter spring scent. The trade-off is cleaning: soil has to be scraped off with a knife tip and the greens swished through several changes of cold water. Doenjang brands differ in saltiness, and the paste is adjusted half a tablespoon at a time.
Because the eel is poached first and picked off the bone, the soup can be eaten by the spoonful without worrying about bones. Koreans make a point of eating it in the hottest stretch of summer, and some add perilla seed powder or extra chili to change the broth.
Winter oysters, plump at this time of year, share a doenjang broth with bitter-edged shepherd's purse. The base is kelp stock and radish, and the paste is held to 1.5 tablespoons, light enough that the oysters still taste of the sea.
Toyama turnips from Yonezawa in Yamagata are harder and sweeter than ordinary turnips. Instead of being sliced, they are pried into rough chunks with the heel of the knife, and the sake-lees broth works its way into the torn surfaces. Even so, the flavor only reaches the center once the soup has cooled overnight and been reheated the next day.
Dried radish greens (siraegi) sauteed in perilla oil bring a nutty, chewy base, and clams add a clean, briny broth on top of it. The clams are added near the end and release salt as they open, so final seasoning waits until after they do.
Doenjang, not gochujang, seasons this crab stew, so it tastes nutty and savory before it tastes hot, with the chili flakes and Cheongyang pepper staying in the background.
Ground perilla seed turns the rice-rinse broth beige and thick, and it eats more like a cream soup than a red jjigae. The dried radish greens (siraegi) need their tough outer skin peeled off, or they stay stringy.
Blue crabs in spring are packed with meat and taste noticeably sweet. Here they are halved and simmered in their shells with chili flakes and Cheongyang peppers, and the closer to live the crabs are when they go in, the more of that sweetness comes through.
Thinly sliced beef brisket, not the usual anchovy stock, supplies the savoriness, giving this doenjang jjigae a meaty rather than oceanic lean. Rice-rinse water forms the base and softens the soybean paste, and the edges of the potato break down a little as they cook, thickening the broth on their own.
Grated lotus root, skin and all, thickens this miso soup on its own: no flour, just its starch and sticky mucilage, with tiny coarse bits left in the broth. Also called gorigori-jiru, it comes from central Miyazaki and is tied to the stringy lotus grown in the pond beside Mizunuma Shrine, associated with the water deity Suijin-sama. Cultivation reportedly began when the Takanabe domain encouraged planting a good Yamato variety to strengthen its finances. Dried horse-mackerel stock gives the base a gentle fish savor.
Taro stem that has not been boiled long enough leaves a prickly, itchy feeling in the throat. So this autumn stew uses thoroughly boiled stems, soaked in cold water and rinsed several times to take off the slippery coating before they go in. The broth is beef and doenjang, thickened with ground perilla seed.
Butterbur stems, peeled of their stringy outer skin, simmer in doenjang broth until they bend limply under a chopstick. Their sharp, acrid taste is the main hurdle: unless the stems are blanched and soaked in cold water first, that harshness spreads through the whole pot.
A can of tuna stands in for meat and gives the doenjang broth its savory depth, with plenty of ugeoji, blanched outer napa cabbage leaves. Use only half the oil from the can; all of it makes the broth greasy.
Mideodeok, a small sea squirt, holds a pocket of briny liquid inside its tough skin, and it bursts in your mouth when you bite down. To keep that liquid in, the stems are left uncut and the sea squirts get only three minutes in the pot, and the doenjang is dissolved in rice-rinsing water rather than anchovy stock. Around Tongyeong and Geoje on Korea's south coast, it is everyday home cooking.
As it simmers, the tough stems of the ugeoji (blanched outer napa cabbage leaves) loosen and soak up the doenjang. A little gochujang tints the broth reddish, and rice-rinse water gives it more body than plain water would.
Pinch two corners of a square of wheat dough together and it takes the shape of a mi, a winnowing basket. In Jikkoku, in Fujikawa, Yamanashi, that shape is said to scoop up good fortune, which is why the soup appears on New Year's morning and at celebrations. The dough goes straight into the broth with the root vegetables instead of being boiled separately, and the flour on its surface gives the soup a light body.
Brisket browned in perilla oil, then doenjang and chili flakes fried in the same fat, give this stew a savory, toasty base before any water goes in. The blanched cabbage leaves spend about 25 minutes in the pot, soaking the beef broth deep into their fibers, while the thinly sliced brisket cooks until it pulls apart along the grain. With only greens and beef in the pot, the flavor is simple and hearty.
No meat and no stock, just plain water. Seaweed fried in sesame oil and doenjang (Korean soybean paste) give the broth its flavor, and tofu takes the place the beef would usually hold. It is lighter than beef seaweed soup, and the doenjang leaves the broth slightly thick.
This stew comes from farm households that picked apple snails off the rice paddy banks and dropped them into their doenjang stew, and the ingredient list is still just snails, doenjang, tofu, zucchini and anchovy stock. Snail meat toughens with long boiling, so it goes in after the zucchini has had about three minutes, and the tofu follows at the very end for a minute or two.
Radish greens dried in autumn used to come out through the winter for soups like this one. Rubbed with doenjang first and then simmered with five spoonfuls of perilla seed powder, they end up in a broth thick enough to spoon over rice and mix in.
Summer yeolmu, young radish greens, leaves a faint bitterness at the end of each spoonful of doenjang broth. It is best while the stems still crunch, so it does not simmer for long.
There is no separate stock here. Seven hundred grams of mussels open in boiling water and their liquor becomes the broth, with doenjang seeping out of the radish greens that were rubbed with it beforehand. Between bites of plump mussel, the greens stay a little fibrous.