282 recipes. Page 2 of 12
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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.
Chicken feet are mostly skin and cartilage, with a sticky, gelatinous chew, and the meat is nibbled off between thin bones. Boiling them first strips the slippery coating so the gochujang and chili flake sauce clings thickly. How hot it gets comes down to the number of cheongyang chilies.
Chicken hearts are springy to bite and taste nuttier the longer you chew. Trimming off the vessels and soaking them in milk takes care of the organ smell. Three or four go on each skewer with a soy and gochujang glaze, and they come off the heat as soon as the cut center turns from pink to grey, before they toughen.
Drumsticks marinated in soy sauce, gochujang and honey roast in the oven. With bone running through a thick piece of meat, clear juices and skin color are not trusted as signs of doneness; a thermometer goes into the thickest part, away from the bone, and the center has to hold at 75°C or above for at least a minute.
It starts with blanched young napa cabbage rubbed with doenjang, gochujang, chili flakes and garlic. The beef simmers separately meanwhile and is skimmed until the broth runs clear; the seasoned greens then go in for twelve minutes, and the paste clinging to the leaves dissolves into the soup.
In this budae jjigae, a spoonful of baked beans sits in the middle of the pot with the gochujang paste on top. As it boils the beans break down, thickening the broth a little and leaving a faint sweetness. The liquid underneath is anchovy stock, not plain water.
This recipe uses only pufferfish sold already cleaned by professionals for eating, never fish you prepare yourself. The lean fillets sit on a wide bed of bean sprouts and steam in a gochujang and chili flake sauce, and the sprouts soak up the spicy liquid while keeping their crunch.
Gochujang heat, the sweetness of maesil plum syrup, and a sharp hit of vinegar land together in each mouthful of these cold somyeon noodles. A thorough cold-water rinse strips off surface starch, so the thin wheat noodles turn bouncy and the sauce coats them evenly instead of clumping. Torn lettuce and cucumber strips bring crunch, and the little moisture they release loosens the thick sauce just enough.
Sweet corn sautéed in butter takes the edge off the gochujang, so the cream sauce leans sweet and mellow rather than fiery. Gochujang and cheese already carry salt, so any extra salt waits until the sauce has been tasted. Cavatappi, the corkscrew pasta, traps corn kernels in its coils, and the noodles and corn end up in the same bite.
Firm tofu, crumbled by hand and fried in olive oil until its moisture cooks off, turns into dry, nutty granules that sit on the greens like a savory topping. Chopped chonggak (young radish) kimchi brings sour, fermented crunch, and the gochujang-yogurt dressing delivers its heat wrapped in a creamy tang.
Peeled deodeok root, pounded five or six times with a mallet, flattens and opens along its fibers, then tears by hand into rough, ribbon-like strips. A thick gochujang and vinegar dressing is rubbed in. For bitterness, the strips soak in cold water for 5 minutes; taste one, and soak longer only if it is still sharp.
Boiled pork and bossam kimchi left over from a bossam meal get a second life here, stir-fried with onion in a gochujang sauce and spooned over rice. The kimchi is chopped coarsely with its stuffing still in it.
A small amount of curry powder in the gochujang marinade is the Chuncheon touch. No water goes into the pan; the cabbage, torn into large pieces, releases enough to turn the marinade into a sauce. When the chicken is gone, rice is fried in whatever sauce is left.
Pan-fried tofu and sour kimchi stir-fried with ground pork take turns on a skewer, turning the classic tofu-and-kimchi plate into something you hold in one hand. Leaving the tofu untouched until its underside sets gives it a crust strong enough to survive the skewer.
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.
Gochujang, chili flakes and soy sauce dissolve into beef bone broth, turning the pot red and heavy. Napa cabbage, onion and oyster mushrooms line the bottom with the intestine and tripe piled on top, and as the vegetables soften underneath they sweeten the broth.
The brisket is seared first to render its fat, and the gochujang and chili flakes are fried in that fat to build the base of the broth. The minari, cut into 5 cm lengths, waits on the side until just before the heat goes off, then goes in only long enough to wilt.
Bugeo is pollack dried through the Gangwon mountain winter, freezing and thawing over and over, which leaves the flesh loose and spongy. Soy and gochujang seasoning works its way into those gaps, and the flavor deepens over the few days it keeps in the fridge. Soaking should stop at 20 minutes, or the flesh goes mushy.
The gochujang sauce grips tough, springy naengmyeon noodles rather than sliding off, and every strand carries the spicy-sour coating. Mixing the sauce 10 minutes ahead gives the sugar time to dissolve and the flavors time to even out. The noodles cook in well under a minute over high heat, and lifting them out the moment the strands separate keeps them from going soft. Rubbing them under cold water to strip the starch, then squeezing them hard, stops leftover water from thinning the sauce. Cucumber and Korean pear, crisped in ice water, cool the heat with crunch and light fruitiness, and half a boiled egg softens the chili's edge.
Gochujang cream pasta combines Korean fermented chili paste with an Italian-style cream sauce. Gochujang adds sweetness and heat, Parmesan contributes salt and aged cheese flavor, and bacon provides a crisp contrast. Onion and minced garlic cook in the fat left by the bacon. In this formula the chili paste is mixed directly with cream, rather than fried alone for a long time. Bacon, gochujang and cheese supply the seasoning, so the pasta water is left unsalted. The reserved water gives control over the sauce thickness; it is a supply for adjustment, not a quantity that must all go into the pan.
Tapped with the back of a knife and torn lengthwise by hand, deodeok (a Korean mountain root) splits into chewy, fibrous strands, but pounded too hard the fibers crush and the chew is gone. A gochujang and vinegar dressing thickened with ground perilla seed gives it a nutty finish, and julienned apple softens the root's bitterness with sweet juice.
In the five-color namul set for Chuseok and Seollal ancestral tables, bellflower root is the white one. The torn root is rubbed hard with salt to draw out its bitterness and rinsed until the cloudy water runs clear, then dressed with gochujang, vinegar, and sugar. Since it is never cooked, it stays crunchy long enough to be made ahead.
Chicken thigh, cabbage and onion stir-fried with gochujang and chili flakes get cold rice tossed in, turning dakgalbi into fried rice. Once it is mixed, the rice is pressed against the pan for 30 seconds to sear the bottom, then covered with mozzarella and melted under a lid.
Dallae, Korean wild chives with small white bulbs, join the gochujang pork only once the meat is fully cooked. They get a single minute over the flame and finish wilting in the residual heat after it is turned off. Their sharp, pungent scent is strongest at the white bulb end.