282 recipes. Page 8 of 12
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Fine, tangled parae hides a lot of sand, and it is washed through five or more changes of water until nothing settles at the bottom of the bowl. Ten seconds in boiling water is all the cooking it gets. The gochujang, vinegar and sugar dressing goes in over two or three additions; pour it all at once and the thin strands clump.
To get the taste of a Korean snack-bar plate, the kimchi is fried with gochujang, dark soy sauce and a pinch of sugar for a sweet edge. Top it with a runny fried egg and crumbled gim (seaweed) and it looks the part too.
One bite brings the springy head of webfoot octopus (jjukkumi), its chewy suckered legs and crunchy soybean sprouts. With plenty of gochugaru and cheongyang chilies on top of that, it is properly hot.
As cabbage and onion wilt over high heat, the moisture they release loosens the gochujang sauce so it coats every slice of sundae, Korean blood sausage. Add rice cakes and it becomes tteoksuni; some finish it with cheese on top.
Cockles are at their plumpest from winter into early spring. They go into boiling water only until the shells start to open, then get a thin layer of spicy sauce and a turn in the pan. Bubbling sauce does not mean the meat is done; the center should hold 85 to 90°C for more than 90 seconds. The sauce left in the pan gets mixed into rice.
A thick layer of radish, 350 g, lines the bottom of the pot and boils for ten minutes before the mackerel is laid on top. The radish soaks up the fish broth, and it goes over rice together with the little broth that is left.
With only half a tablespoon of gochujang against soy sauce and oyster sauce, this braise leans salty and savory rather than red and fiery. That small spoonful of chili paste has to dissolve fully into the soy and oyster sauce, or the pork and scapes end up unevenly seasoned. Lean pork tenderloin, sliced across the grain about 1 cm thick, stays tender through a short simmer while its juices enrich the sauce. Adding the garlic scapes only after the liquid has dropped by half lets them soak up that sauce and still keep their crunch and mild, sharp bite. Left too long they turn stringy, which is why the pan comes off the heat with a spoonful of glossy sauce left for the rice.
Thick, springy jjolmyeon noodles get tossed in a sweet, sour and spicy dressing of gochujang, vinegar and sugar. Cabbage and cucumber soaked in cold water stay crisp against the heat, while a halved boiled egg rounds things out. The noodle is said to have started in the 1970s as a production mistake at a noodle factory in Incheon.
The bitterness of sseumbagui, a Korean bitter green, is not meant to be removed. A short soak in cold salt water only softens it, and the greens, still pleasantly bitter, are tossed in a sweet and tangy dressing of gochujang, vinegar and sugar.
Pork belly cut into 1 cm pieces renders enough fat to fry the kimchi and rice, so no cooking oil is added and every grain tastes of pork. That only works if the pork gets 4 to 5 minutes, until the edges are golden and the fat coats the pan.
Hwangtae is pollock dried through a winter of freezing and thawing in mountain air, which leaves the flesh light and full of tiny holes. Soaked and stir-fried, the shreds take the gochujang glaze all the way in and turn red, moist and chewy.
Seared tripe, briefly warmed sundae (Korean blood sausage), and cabbage that keeps some bite all share one pan, each with a different chew. Equal parts gochujang and gochugaru make the heat unmistakable.
Busan-style kkomjangeo, or hagfish, is cooked fast over high heat. Leave it too long in the marinade or the pan and it weeps water and loses its springy chew. The scallions go in just long enough to wilt.
Canned whelks need almost no prep: drain them and halve the large pieces. The meat is already cooked, and it goes in only after the cabbage and onion are tender, just to heat through for three minutes at most.
Sour, long-fermented kimchi and pork back ribs braise down together in one pot, so the first impression is tangy and savory before it is spicy. The riper the kimchi, the stronger its sourness and savory depth, which makes the state of the kimchi the biggest factor in how the dish turns out.
Tangy kimchi and sweet soy-marinated beef cling to thick udon in a saucy, soup-free stir-fry. Searing the beef undisturbed over high heat builds flavor. Frying the kimchi until red oil pools in the pan, before any sauce goes in, keeps the seasoning concentrated. The fat, round noodles hold the sauce well, making a filling one-plate meal.
Fresh tot (hijiki) turns from brown to bright green the moment it hits boiling water, and it has a pleasant snap. It's tossed with thin slices of onion in a sour-spicy dressing of equal parts gochujang and vinegar.
In spring, when cockles are in season, their meat goes into this bowl with raw water parsley (minari) and a gochujang dressing. The cockles come out of the boiling water after 30 seconds; any longer and they shrink and turn rubbery.
This jeyuk bokkeum starts by searing: pork with only a thin coat of gochujang marinade is spread across a very hot pan and left untouched for about two minutes until the edges darken. Onion and scallion join only after the pork has browned.
Without the tripe of sundae-gopchang-bokkeum, this stir-fry leans on cabbage, onion, and scallion for a lighter plate. The vegetables are cut thick so they still have bite after cooking, and soy sauce in the gochujang glaze makes it as salty as it is spicy.
Gochujang paste goes onto the cut faces of the crab and into the gaps in the shell, and it rests 15 minutes at room temperature. It grills shell side down over medium heat first; after the turn, more paste is brushed on the cut side and runs down into the shell over the meat. Whatever collects inside the shell ends up as a dip for the meat.
Blue crab, clams, squid and shrimp share one pot that keeps simmering on a low flame at the table. The seafood gets fished out first as it's ready; the tofu and zucchini stay in the red broth a while longer.
Thick-cut onion and green onion line the pot so the squid sits above the bottom while a gochujang and chili-flake sauce steams it from the top. Gochujang gives a thick heat that clings to each piece, and the flakes add a sharper spiciness over it. Compared with stir-fried squid, there is no oil, and the moisture the vegetables release loosens the sauce enough to spoon over rice. Because squid toughens quickly, the whole cook stays around ten minutes, ending when the flesh turns opaque and the edges curl slightly. Cutting the vegetables thick and spreading the squid out without overlapping pieces is what lets both finish properly in that short window.
Thin-sliced pork belly fried until golden renders the fat that everything else cooks in. Onion, scallion and kimchi go into that fat, and the kimchi keeps frying until its juice has nearly gone, concentrating flavor and keeping the noodles from turning soggy. Older, more fermented kimchi gives a deeper sour note to the finished udon.