689 recipes. Page 16 of 29
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Dried pollock strips toasted briefly in perilla oil give this clear, chili-free stew a nutty base, and napa cabbage softens slowly into it, adding its own sweetness. The pollock only gets a quick dip in water, since a long soak washes out its flavor.
A small piece of butter on each scallop melts into the juice pooled in the shell and becomes a salty, rich sauce with no extra step. Cleaning is simple and the steaming takes six or seven minutes, which makes it easy to put out when drinks are being set up in a hurry.
Wide, thick noodles take on the numbing tingle of Sichuan peppercorns, the heat of chili oil, the tang of black vinegar and the fermented saltiness of doubanjiang (chili bean paste) all at once. The numbing note comes from warming the peppercorns briefly in chili oil over low heat, pulled off before they darken or smell scorched. Heat is best adjusted with the amount of doubanjiang rather than more chili oil, which keeps the flavor clean. Because the noodles are so broad, a sauce with oil floating on top seasons them unevenly, so the sauce gets stirred to the bottom and the noodles are tossed hard. Boiled 1 minute short of the package time, they stay chewy to the last bite. Bok choy blanched in the noodle water adds a crisp, green bite between the oily strands.
The rice cooks in plain water, and the salt and heat come later from a soy sauce with cheongyang chili and green onion that is mixed in at the table. Octopus tentacles steam on top of the rice so their sea aroma works into the grains, while thin radish slices covering the bottom of the pot stop the rice from sticking and add a little sweetness. The scorched rice at the bottom gets scraped up and eaten too.
Mussels steamed in butter and rice wine get green chili and scallion, so a sharp heat follows the richness of the butter. The liquor from the shells mixes with the melted butter, and there is no separate sauce to make.
Dried, then soaked and boiled again, the radish greens called siraegi have a chewy, fibrous bite that fresh greens lack. Here they are massaged with doenjang and garlic, simmered for more than twenty minutes, and turned milky white with perilla seed powder added in two batches.
Jjageuli is not supposed to leave much broth behind. Gochujang seasoning is fried in rendered pork fat, thick-cut potatoes go in, and as they simmer they slump and crumble until only a shallow, thick sauce is left in the pot. It sits closer to a rice topping than a soup.
Mild Korean green peppers are halved and packed with a pork and tofu filling, the same idea as pan-fried stuffed peppers, but steamed instead of fried for a lighter result, with skins that turn just translucent. The thin dusting of flour inside each pepper is not decoration: it glues the filling to the pepper so nothing slides out during steaming. Leaving a short stem on gives each piece a handle.
No broth at all: hot, thick noodles are tossed with chili-oil pork, chives, scallion, fish powder, and a raw yolk until everything coats the strands. The noodles skip the cold rinse so they reach the bowl hot and the yolk loosens into a sauce. The pork must be cooked down until no thin liquid remains in the pan; otherwise water pools at the bottom and the mix turns uneven. Spreading the toppings in a ring instead of one pile keeps the flavor from bunching up when everything is mixed. Fish powder and nori bring the savory depth a soup would normally supply.
Because it starts from cooked rice simmered in anchovy stock rather than raw grains, this porridge comes together much faster. The pollock roe breaks apart into the broth, tinting it pink and spreading its salty, savory flavor through the pot. Eggs poured into a rolling boil seize into rough clumps, but drizzled in at a gentle simmer they set into soft curds.
The name means meat returned to the pot: pork belly is simmered whole, cooled, sliced thin, then fried again in the wok. That second round crisps the edges while the fat turns pleasantly chewy, and doubanjiang (chili bean paste) with fermented black beans coats it in a salty, spicy sauce. Leek and green pepper go in at the end and stay crunchy. How much soy sauce to add depends on the doubanjiang, as brands vary a lot in saltiness.
The point is the ox knee cartilage, cooked until it turns soft and chewy, so it is the texture of the pieces, not the color of the broth, that tells you when to stop. There are no marrow bones in the pot, so don't expect a milky broth. Butchers sometimes sell knee and tendon together, but they are different cuts.
This is the everyday pork belly and sour kimchi stew with one addition: a tablespoon of doenjang, fried briefly with the chili flakes before the water goes in. It gives the bottom of the broth a slightly earthier weight. If the kimchi is not sour yet, use half a teaspoon of sugar rather than a few drops of vinegar.
Fat melting out of the mackerel mixes into the spicy broth and ends up in the potatoes. The potatoes simmer in the sauce first, and the fish joins them only when a chopstick slides halfway in; it needs just a short braise.
Dried anchovies and kelp make a clear, light broth for thin somyeon noodles, served warm or chilled as a summer meal. Toasting the cleaned anchovies in a dry pan before simmering takes the fishy edge off and adds a faint nuttiness. Skimming the foam keeps the broth clear, and rubbing the cooked noodles under cold water until it runs clean keeps them springy and stops starch from clouding the bowl. Seaweed flakes, sesame, and green onion are all it needs on top.
The octopus gets two minutes over high heat, and the rice goes in as soon as it starts to curl. That leaves no time to mix sauce in the pan; it is stirred smooth before the burner is lit. For less heat, the chili flakes are dropped and gochujang used alone.
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.
Frozen pollock gets just ten minutes in the red, gochugaru-spiked broth. Any longer and the flesh falls apart while the bones leach a bitter, fishy taste. Tofu, green onion and cheongyang chilies join for the final five minutes.
Sour kimchi is fried with chili flakes, anchovy stock goes on top, and 200 g of soybean sprouts follow. After that, the lid has one rule: if it goes on, it stays on until the sprouts are cooked, and if it is left off, it stays off the whole time. Lifting it halfway brings up a raw, beany smell.
Mackerel is oily and strong enough that a sauce built on both gochujang (Korean chili paste) and chili flakes does not bury it. A little ginger juice in the sauce takes the edge off its fishiness.
In Gunma homes, wide unsalted noodles go straight into a pot of root vegetables and dashi without being boiled first. The broth comes out slightly cloudy and thick rather than clear, and that is how it should be. Taro, burdock, daikon, shiitake, and fried tofu make it a hearty one-pot meal seasoned with both soy sauce and miso. Noodle thickness and vegetables change from one household to another.
Whole hulled barley keeps a gentle pop inside a thick pot of softened rice, kidney beans, and three kinds of potato. In Yamanashi mountain villages where paddy rice was hard to grow, rice was saved for celebrations and barley carried everyday meals. Nothing is seasoned in the pot; each diner stirs in negi miso, a mix of scallion, miso, bonito flakes, and a little sugar.
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.
Donko, a Miyagi name for ezo isoaine and chigo cod, firms up and develops a rich liver from autumn into winter, and this soup uses the whole fish: flesh, head, bones and liver. The fish's wide mouth and tapering tail made it a lucky symbol, money flowing in and not slipping out, so around Kesennuma families hung donko at the household altar for Ebisu observances before turning it into soup. It is still served to warm winter guests.