689 recipes. Page 12 of 29
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Hwangtae (dried pollock) is toasted in sesame oil before the water goes in, which turns the broth milky and savory. There is no chili here, so it is not spicy, and the bean sprouts and radish give it a clean, refreshing taste.
Thin beef that hits the pan in clumps steams instead of searing. So before it goes into the soy and pear-juice marinade, every stuck-together slice is peeled apart and laid flat.
This is Peking duck without the restaurant setup: no hanging the bird, just a rack in a home oven. The skin needs to dry overnight in the fridge, so it starts the day before, and the carved duck is wrapped in thin pancakes with cucumber, scallion and hoisin. Home ovens vary, so don't count on the paper-thin crackling of a restaurant duck.
Chamnamul (Korean pimpinella greens) brings a sharp, grassy fragrance that cuts through mild tofu and anchovy-kelp stock. The tofu gets four minutes on its own to absorb the broth, while the greens stay in only long enough to wilt. Draining the cubes briefly in a sieve makes them easier to slide in without breaking.
Well-aged kimchi brings a sharp sourness that plays against the oily white flesh of hairtail, so this fish stew tastes more tangy and spicy than fishy. A five-minute soak in lightly salted water, followed by a rinse, takes much of the strong smell out of the fish.
The longer the kimchi has sat in the fridge and the sourer it has become, the better it suits this braise. Simmered with soy sauce and gochugaru (Korean chili flakes), its sharp acidity softens, and the tofu, laid in raw without frying, soaks up the red liquid to the middle.
Wide flour noodles from Yamanashi simmer straight in miso broth with kabocha, potato, daikon, and napa cabbage, leaving the soup thick and slow to cool. In mountain areas poorly suited to rice, houtou long served as a staple, and its lasting warmth means it is eaten most often in winter. Unlike udon, the dough has no salt and the floured strips are never boiled on their own, which leaves their starch to thicken the pot.
A Shanghai soup dumpling holds both a pork filling and a mouthful of hot broth inside its thin wrapper. The broth begins as pork stock jelly, chopped and folded into the filling, which melts as the dumplings steam. Set one on a spoon, nick the skin, and drink the broth before dipping the rest in black vinegar with slivered ginger.
Ground perilla seed turns into a thin, nutty coating on each strand of bracken fern. The perilla oil is split in two: half goes into the raw seasoning so the soy and garlic soak into the chewy fibers, and the other half carries the green onion's aroma in the pan.
Brisket and thin slices of radish are stir-fried in sesame oil before any water is added, which lays a nutty base under the chili-red broth of this market-style beef soup. Blanched outer cabbage leaves (ugeoji) soak up the broth and turn silky over the long simmer.
Because its soy and pear-juice marinade still tastes right once cold, Seoul-style bulgogi often goes into lunchboxes. Apple juice can replace the pear juice and tenderizes the beef much the same way.
Pork belly goes into a dry pan and cooks in its own fat, turned just once after the first side browns. Thin slices of garlic then fry in the rendered fat, and the meat, cut into bites with scissors, is wrapped in lettuce with the garlic, ssamjang (a soybean and chili paste), green onion and chili pepper.
Sumo wrestlers ate this hot pot together in their stables, which explains how much goes into a single pot: chicken thigh, chicken meatballs, napa cabbage, mizuna, shiitake, soft tofu, fried tofu and kuzukiri noodles. The broth is chicken stock with grated garlic and ginger, and people help themselves to whatever is done while the rest keeps simmering.
A local dish of Taean in South Chungcheong: blue crab and aged kimchi in one pot, seasoned with salted shrimp. The broth gets its flavor from the kimchi, and it has to be well-fermented mukeunji. The crabs have the top shell removed and the leg tips trimmed, and the bodies are cut in half before they go in.
Each block of firm tofu gets a shallow well scooped out with a spoon, and none of the scooped tofu is wasted: it returns to the filling with ground beef, shiitake and carrot. Dubu-seon comes from the Korean royal court table; this version skips the older crumble-and-shape method and steams the stuffed blocks directly, with the filling mounded slightly above the rim. A thin glaze of soy sauce and water keeps the finish light and lets the mild tofu lead.
Tiny freshwater corbicula clams, a specialty of Hadong along the Seomjin River in South Gyeongsang, give this noodle soup a broth that tastes strongly of shellfish yet stays light and clear. Restaurants along the river serve the clams in many forms and treat them as the defining local taste. Seasoning is kept to soup soy sauce and a little salt so the clams lead, while one cheongyang chili adds quiet background heat. Skipping the straining step leaves grit and an earthy taste that clouds that clean flavor. The somyeon is boiled separately and scrubbed hard in cold water, since leftover starch would cloud the strained broth all over again.
Made with a knife and no heat at all, this summer side from the Murayama and Okitama areas of Yamagata went onto rice by the spoonful during the hot farming season. The eggplant and cucumber are chopped small, and the myoga, ginger, shiso, long onion, and green chili finer still. Bonito flakes and dashi soy sauce go on just before it is served.
The king oyster mushrooms are torn by hand along the grain instead of sliced, then steamed. The soy, vinegar and chili flake dressing seeps into the torn fibers, and with no oil in the pan the mushroom stays clean-tasting.
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.
Through the doenjang-fried pork comes the faintly earthy smell of Swiss chard. The leaves go limp as they cool, so it is eaten straight from the pan, spooned over rice.
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.
Cheonggukjang smells far stronger than doenjang, and once it is stirred into the stock its earthy, heavy aroma takes over the whole pot. Leaving the soup covered off the heat for a few minutes before serving softens that smell noticeably.
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.
This is better ten minutes after it comes off the heat than right away; as it cools, the potatoes keep drinking in the soy sauce until they are seasoned all the way through.