282 recipes. Page 7 of 12
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Dried miyeok swells more than eightfold in a 20-minute soak, so adding extra because the dry pile looks small quickly turns one side dish into a big bowlful.
The pork shoulder marinates in gochujang for 10 minutes, then gets spread across a hot pan and left alone for the first 2 minutes. That pause is when the glaze touching the pan catches and browns at the edges.
Canned whelk is warmed briefly in a gochujang sauce sharpened with vinegar, then tossed off the heat with raw onion, cucumber and scallion. Unlike the cold whelk salad, the sauce here is warm while the vegetables stay raw and crunchy.
Sundae, Korean blood sausage, alternates with onion and green onion on the skewer before it goes into the pan. The onions lose water and turn sweet as they cook, a break between rich mouthfuls of sausage. The glaze mixes gochujang with ketchup, oligosaccharide syrup, and soy sauce.
Pollock dried through a winter of freezing and thawing puffs up into hwangtae, softer and chewier than most dried fish. The strips get a thin coat of gochujang, soy sauce and syrup and only a minute or two per side over medium-low heat. Tear them apart while warm for makgeolli or soju, with mayonnaise for dipping if you like.
The broth is reduced until there is just enough to mix into rice or spoon onto a lettuce wrap. With so little liquid, it is hard to fix once it turns salty, which is why only 80 percent of the doenjang goes in at first and the rest is used to adjust at the end. While the pastes fry for 30 seconds, keep the heat low and keep stirring.
The firm, slightly chewy flesh of half-dried pollock holds together through a long spicy braise and takes the seasoning all the way in. Gochugaru and gochujang together give the sauce body and a deep red color, and a spoonful of syrup added near the end gives it shine. Basting two or three times beats flipping, which only tears the fish. When the sauce turns thick and sticks to the pollock, it is ready to serve with the radish and a bowl of rice.
A big platter piled with somyeon, shredded cabbage, cucumber, carrot and torn lettuce arrives tossed in a spicy-tangy gochujang dressing. Each vegetable brings its own kind of crunch against the soft noodles, and the dressing of gochujang, vinegar, sugar and soy hits sweet, sour and hot in quick succession. Sesame oil and toasted seeds round off the sharpness without dulling it.
Drying makes radish sweeter and chewy, and that chew is the reason to use it. The strips get only 20 minutes in cold water; any longer and they turn limp like fresh radish. Rice syrup in the gochujang dressing gives it its shine.
Bite-size pieces of webfoot octopus (jjukkumi, a small octopus) are scattered through rice stained red by gochujang sauce. The first sear stops the moment the pieces curl and turn opaque, because they keep cooking while the sauce and rice are stirred in.
Oily mackerel and boiled gondre, a rustic, grassy Korean thistle green, share one gochujang and soy glaze. The mackerel is pan-browned separately and added near the end, so it is still in large flakes on the plate.
Garae-tteok and Vienna sausages alternate on the skewer and brown first; the gochujang glaze only goes on over low heat for the last minute or so. If you are wary of the heat, hold back some glaze, taste, and add more only if you want it.
Wrapped in lettuce and other leaves to eat, this pork shoulder is marinated in gochujang for at least 30 minutes and spread in a single layer over high heat. For the first 2 minutes it is left alone, until the edges go dark brown. The sugar is stirred fully into the marinade beforehand. Any grains left undissolved scorch into black spots.
Two tablespoons of gochujang set the base, and half a tablespoon of chili flakes adjusts the heat. Pork shoulder is first cooked with a little of the water, then the seasoning is fried onto it for a minute, which keeps the gochujang from floating separately in the broth. It suits being ladled generously over cold rice.
Dried only partway in the sea wind on Korea's east coast, kodari pollock keeps some moisture in its flesh. Braised, it turns chewy without the dry, fibrous texture of fully dried hwangtae or bugeo. Radish under the fish keeps it off the hot pot bottom while a spicy-sweet sauce of gochujang, gochugaru, soy sauce and sugar cooks into it over about half an hour. It tastes even better after a night in the fridge, and leftover sauce makes a good bibimbap seasoning.
Gochujang and doenjang dissolved together into anchovy-kelp stock give this Gangwon-style knife-cut noodle soup its red, fiery broth. It comes from the province's mountainous interior, where it warmed workers through the cold seasons. The chili paste brings rounded sweetness and heat, the soybean paste an earthy depth, and an extra spoon of gochugaru sharpens the finish. Potato breaks down at the edges as it simmers, thickening the soup with no added starch, so the noodles end up in something closer to a stew than a clear broth. Fresh noodles need constant stirring for the first 30 seconds or their starch clumps, and after that a steady medium heat with the odd scrape of the bottom keeps the thick broth from catching or reducing too far.
Medium dried anchovies are toasted in a dry pan for a minute before any sauce touches them, which drives off moisture and fishy smell and keeps them crunchy under the glaze. Once the anchovies are in the sauce, the coating takes under 2 minutes, and any longer sets the glaze hard.
This version has ground pork in it, and only a little gochujang, so the sour tang of well-fermented kimchi leads. Made with long-aged kimchi (mugeunji), it gets noticeably deeper.
Blanched beef intestines (gopchang) go into a dry pan first and give up their own fat, and that fat, not cooking oil, is what the gochujang sauce and vegetables are fried in. The chewy gopchang carries a strong hit of chili from both gochujang and chili flakes.
Rice cakes and cocktail sausages take turns on the skewer, and the glaze has more ketchup than gochujang, so it tastes sweet and tangy more than hot. The glaze goes on only when the skewers are nearly cooked, with sesame seeds scattered over at the end.
Webfoot octopus has a smaller body and thicker legs than nakji, the long-arm octopus. It spends just 10 minutes in the spicy marinade and 3 to 4 minutes over high heat, and the slightly charred sauce that catches on the pan floor is part of the flavor. In spring they often come full of roe, and the leftover sauce goes into fried rice.
Half a tablespoon of doenjang goes into the gochujang seasoning, smoothing the sharp edge gochujang has on its own into something more savory. The pastes are fried in the pork fat over low heat for just a minute.
Spicy pork and bean sprouts, usually a stir-fry, are steamed in this version, which uses no oil and lets the gochujang and gochugaru seasoning come through more directly. As the sprouts wilt under the lid they release water that turns into a light broth and carries the seasoning into the pork shoulder, while their remaining crunch eases the heat. Spreading the meat thin and low over the sprouts lets it cook at the same pace throughout. The dish is served as soon as it is done, before the sprouts give off too much water and turn limp. Rice or thin somyeon noodles stirred into the leftover broth finish the pot.
Hot gochujang-marinated pork goes straight onto cold rinsed somen (thin wheat noodles), putting warm meat and chilled noodles in the same bite. The pork shoulder sits in gochujang and chili flakes with soy sauce and sugar, which lay a savory sweetness under the heat. A short, fierce stir-fry keeps water from pooling in the pan and lets the edges caramelize while the inside stays moist. Cabbage and onion cook in the same pan, adding sweetness under the chili heat. A rinse in ice water makes the boiled noodles chewier. The two are combined only right before serving, since thin noodles mixed too early soak up moisture and swell.