282 recipes. Page 11 of 12
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Tuna, rice, chopped pickled radish and cucumber are bound with gochujang mayonnaise and packed tight into seasoned tofu pouches, the kind used for inari sushi. More gochujang makes it hotter; more mayonnaise makes the filling softer.
Soybean sprouts pick up the beefy richness of thin-sliced brisket (chadolbaegi), because the fat the brisket renders is the only oil used for the chili sauce. Brisket this thin browns in a minute or two and the sprouts should stay crunchy, which makes the whole cook brief and fast. Blot off only the excess fat; wiping the pan dry leaves nothing to fry the paste in.
As sliced duck grills with onion, the fat that melts out mixes with the gochujang marinade and pools in the pan as a sweet, spicy sauce. Spooning it back over the meat while it cooks is what gives the surface its shine. Wrapped in perilla leaves, each bite is noticeably less fiery.
Kimchi, ham, and tofu, all common refrigerator staples, come together into something close to a pared-down budae jjigae. Frying the kimchi for 2 minutes first tames its sourness so it blends with the salty ham and the sweet heat of gochujang instead of competing.
One pot of spicy anchovy broth carries three rounds: thin beef and vegetables first, then kalguksu noodles, then fried rice scraped from the bottom. Beef slices go in one at a time, since a clump stays red in the middle. Each round leaves more flavor in the broth for the next. Stop the rice once a thin crust starts to form, before it scorches.
Apple snails, diced zucchini, onion, and crumbled tofu are simmered with doenjang and gochujang into a chunky paste, then folded with warm rice into lettuce and perilla leaves. Unlike ureong doenjang jjigae, a soupy stew with the same snails, this version is reduced until a spoonful holds its shape for about five seconds and nothing drips from the leaf.
Take the garlic scapes off the heat while they are still bright green and they stay crisp to the core; longer than that, the color dulls and they turn tough. For anyone who eats less heat, hold back some of the gochujang sauce and add it bit by bit, tasting as you go.
Squid and pork belly share one gochujang marinade, but only the pork goes into the pan at first. After five or six minutes it has given up its fat and the sauce has turned glossy; the squid follows and cooks in three or four, soaking up pork-enriched sauce as it goes.
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.
Konjac noodles, blanched for 2 minutes to lose their faint odor, keep a bouncy, almost rubbery chew that plays against crisp shreds of cucumber, carrot, and onion. The dressing is gochujang sharpened with vinegar and softened with a little sugar, soy sauce, and garlic, finished with sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. Served cold after a short rest in the fridge, it works as a banchan or a light side, with the translucent strands stained red by the sauce.
To match the sourness of yeolmu kimchi (young radish greens), the gochujang sauce is first loosened with vinegar and maesil, a green plum syrup. Barley rice is topped in sections with the kimchi, cucumber and lettuce plus halved boiled eggs, and the sauce goes in only right before eating, half of it first.
The octopus is already boiled, so the pan only has to warm it through and coat it in gochujang sauce. The heat goes off the moment it starts to visibly shrink, and the onion and carrot are left a little underdone so they keep some crunch.
On a flat, thin fish like tongue sole, the chili marinade sits evenly on the surface and seasons the flesh quickly. Maesil cheong, a green plum syrup, takes the pasty edge off the gochujang and, with the sugar, caramelizes into a glossy brown coating.
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.
Tteokbokki sauce, made from gochujang, sugar and soy sauce, coats both chewy rice cakes and thick udon for a bowl that alternates between two kinds of chew. The rice cakes need longer to soften, which gives them and the fish cakes a head start while the udon cooks only briefly. The moment the sauce clings thickly, the udon is plated, before a longer simmer can swell and break it.
Medium anchovies are bigger and thicker than the tiny ones used in the sweet version, and their heads and dark guts, which would make the dish bitter, come off one by one. Gochujang brings a fermented heat, chili flakes deepen the red, and the amount of flakes is the dial for spiciness.
Sliced sora, a Korean sea snail, stays chewy, with the gochujang sauce cooked right down onto it and no liquid left in the pan. A weak flame lets water pool and turns it into a stir-fry, so the pan goes on high. Trim off the tough innard end while slicing.
The gochujang is stirred into the stock rather than fried in the oil, so there is no scorched edge and the broth comes out an even orange. Clams and shrimp layer their sea flavor over the anchovy stock.
Young radish kimchi, yeolmu, and some of its brine are mixed into a tangy gochujang dressing for cold somyeon, letting the kimchi flavor lead rather than plain chili sweetness. Only half the kimchi is tossed with the noodles, and the rest sits on top so the stems stay crisp. Noodles that are not drained well leave the sauce pooling like water at the bottom of the bowl.
Myeongyeopchae, pollock floss, is finer and softer than ordinary dried pollock strips, and once stir-fried it sits between the two familiar dried-fish sides: softer than seasoned dried pollock, milder than the shredded squid stir-fry. Its cottony clumps are teased apart along the grain by hand before cooking. A spoonful of mayonnaise in the sauce rounds off the gochujang.
Bellflower root soaks in salt water for ten minutes and blanches for just one, enough to soften its bitterness while keeping its firm crunch. Coated in gochujang, it grills in a pan or over an open flame, and the open flame gives a stronger smoky note.
Ripe tomato, roughly chopped, goes into an otherwise familiar beef short rib stew and turns the broth tangy and thick. It melts into the gochujang sauce, leaving hardly a trace except a deeper red.
Every bite mixes two temperatures: warm, savory slices of egg-battered beef on top of cold, sweet-sour gochujang noodles. If the thin beef is floured while still damp, the egg coating lifts and slides off in the pan.
It is called a stir-fry, but for the first few minutes the lid stays on. Bean sprouts laid on the bottom let out enough water to keep the gochujang from scorching, and a final blast of heat reduces that liquid into a thick sauce that coats the octopus.