236 recipes. Page 2 of 10
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After the whole chicken has simmered for fifty minutes, the meat comes off and the bones go back in alone for another fifteen, releasing gelatin that gives the clear broth a gentle body. Unlike samgyetang, it has no ginseng or glutinous rice, only onion, garlic and ginger, so the taste is mostly chicken.
Pomfret has thin, tender flesh that slips off the bone easily once the whole steamed fish reaches the table. Ginger and green onion are split into two rounds: the first steams with the fish to cut any fishiness, and the second goes on with the warm soy and rice wine sauce for fresh aroma. That sauce is mild and barely salty, letting the clean taste of the fish lead.
Salting decides the texture of this napa cabbage kimchi: under-salted leaves weep liquid and turn mushy during fermentation, while over-salted ones bury the seasoning. Blooming the gochugaru in sweet rice paste before the fish sauce goes in gives a heavy paste that clings to each leaf instead of sliding off. Spread it thinly between the layers, since too much filling makes the kimchi salty and soft. Fresh-tasting at first, it grows deeper and tangier after about a week, and well-soured kimchi is the one to use for kimchi-jjigae or stir-fried kimchi.
Halved onion and ginger, charred black in a dry pan, lose their raw bite and lend a caramel sweetness to an otherwise clear broth. Thin slices of Korean chadolbaegi brisket go into the bowl raw and cook only from the boiling broth poured over them, staying soft and juicy. The thinner the slices, the better that brief heat reaches the middle. The marbled brisket fat adds more body than standard pho, landing somewhere between Korean gomtang and Vietnamese pho. Bean sprouts, cilantro, and lime on the side let each person tune aroma and acidity, with the cilantro added just before eating so its scent stays fresh.
Most of the effort goes into a wet paste of onion, garlic, and ginger, fried slowly until the oil separates from the solids. Rushing it leaves a raw, harsh edge in the sauce. After that, chicken thighs simmer in coconut milk with turmeric, ground coriander, and lemongrass until the sauce turns bright yellow and thick enough to coat the meat. Ayam gulai belongs to the Padang food of West Sumatra's Minangkabau people, whose restaurants lay out many small plates before anyone orders and charge only for the ones you touch.
Fermented skate, boiled pork belly, and aged kimchi are laid side by side, then stacked one piece of each into a single bite. Keeping them in separate rows instead of piling them together shows at a glance what is left, which makes pairing them up easy. The pork is sliced an even 0.5 cm thick so a stack of all three still fits in one mouthful.
Rice simmered low until the grains all but vanish forms a smooth base for cubes of century egg, whose white has set into amber jelly and whose yolk has turned creamy and dark green. The egg, a duck egg cured for weeks in clay, ash, and salt, brings a dense, faintly sulfurous richness that stands out against the plain porridge.
Dry-frying, gan bian in Chinese, means cooking the beans over high heat with very little stirring until the skins wrinkle and pick up brown spots. This home-style version seasons them with doubanjiang, garlic and ginger and leaves out ya cai, dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, so the result is salty and gently hot rather than numbing. Crumbly fried pork settles in between the beans.
Thin slices of ginger simmered in sugar syrup until glossy and slightly translucent, then rolled in sugar, taste sweet first and warm with ginger after. Slices cut to an even thickness soften and take up syrup at the same pace. The finishing sugar goes on only once the pieces have cooled and lost their wet surface, because on warm, sticky ginger it simply dissolves instead of forming a crystal coat.
Ginger and black peppercorns steep first and are strained out, and the pear poaches in that liquid, so the punch carries their warmth without a single peppercorn in the cup. Before any honey goes in, the sweetness comes from the pear itself. It can be drunk warm right away, but for a chilled holiday table it is made the day before and rested overnight in the fridge, with pine nuts floated on just before serving.
Drumettes have plenty of collagen around the bone, and fully cooked, the layer under the skin turns pleasantly sticky. The soy and honey glaze sets dark brown only in the last few minutes, after the oven is turned up, and it can tip into burnt fast, so stay by the oven.
Dak hanmari means one whole chicken, and it arrives that way: uncut, simmered with potatoes, still in its pot, to be snipped apart with scissors at the table. Once the chicken is gone, knife-cut noodles go into the broth the potatoes have turned cloudy, and that is the end of the meal.
Butterfish is so tender that it is never turned in the pot; instead the broth is spooned over every two or three minutes to cook the top. The soy broth carries ginger and only a little chili flake; the heat is barely there.
With no gochugaru at all, this white kimchi is mild, and its clear brine is eaten along with the cabbage. Pear, radish, garlic and ginger carry the flavor instead, and the pear adds sweetness while softening the fermented smell. The filling is tossed lightly with fingertips, because rough handling bruises the radish and pear strips, and everything is drained well to keep the brine from clouding. After half a day at room temperature it ferments slowly in the fridge for 2 to 3 weeks, until the liquid tastes clean, cool and gently sour, a good foil for fatty meat.
Beef shank simmered for 2 hours with star anise, cinnamon and ginger yields a clear broth with a gentle spice aroma. The dish comes from Lanzhou in Gansu province, where the noodles are hand-pulled; store-bought Chinese wheat noodles stand in for them. Keeping the pot at a quiet simmer the whole time decides whether the broth stays clear. Daikon, sliced beef, cilantro and chili oil finish each bowl.
Fried chicken gets one firm press in a mortar, enough to crack the crisp skin but not shred the meat, and a coarse sambal of red chili, boiled garlic, salt, and lime juice goes into the cracks. That is the Javanese idea behind ayam penyet, smashed chicken. Because the legs are first simmered with garlic, ginger, and salt, the oil only has to blister and darken the skin.
Whole yellow croaker spends two days buried in sea salt in the fridge, then gets a coat of garlic, ginger, chili flakes and cheongju (clear rice wine) and goes back to the fridge for 5 to 7 days. Unlike jeotgal left to ferment at room temperature for a long time, every stage here happens in the fridge. The seasoning has to reach inside the belly as well as the skin, otherwise the flesh near the bone stays plain. Small pieces go with plain rice or into kimchi jjigae.
In Vietnam this is what people eat for breakfast or when they are feeling unwell, much the way Koreans turn to dakjuk. The broth carries a quiet heat from sliced ginger, and the seasoning is fish sauce rather than soy.
Ketchup, chili sauce and a splash of vinegar make a sauce that leans sweet and tangy rather than hot. Shallow-frying the shrimp in a starch coat, rather than deep-frying them, leaves a coating that turns silky in the sauce while the meat stays springy.
Sujeonggwa, the Korean cinnamon-ginger punch sweetened with dark brown sugar, is frozen in a tray and raked with a fork into icy crystals that each carry a clear hit of spice. Leave too long between scrapes and it sets into a solid slab, which is why the raking continues at steady intervals after the first pass. Thin strips of dried persimmon and pine nuts on top are the same garnish traditionally floated in the drink.
Large cubes of beet and slices of ginger sit in salt brine with a splash of sauerkraut juice to start fermentation, and the result is a deep red drink that tastes salty first, then tart and faintly fizzy. Cutting the beets small or grating them speeds fermentation too much and clouds the liquid. Any fuzzy growth, pink, green, or black spots, or an unpleasant smell means the whole batch gets thrown out, untasted.
Dakgalbi usually means chicken stir-fried with vegetables on an iron plate, but this Chuncheon-style version puts only the marinated chicken on a grill. The gochujang paste caramelizes at high heat, charring the edges dark and leaving a faint bitterness after the sweet heat.
Bite-size chicken thigh gets a one-minute blanch in boiling water before the soup proper begins, and the broth stays clear despite the meat. The radish is sliced thin and flat, turning translucent in ten minutes, and the seasoning is soup soy sauce and salt, with no chili.
The wingettes brown in a dry pan, skin side first, before the soy sauce mixture goes in to reduce. By the time the sauce is nearly gone, the meat pulls easily off the bone.