689 recipes. Page 18 of 29
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The blue crab simmers first and gives the broth its sweetness; clams and shrimp come after. It is a red, chili-heavy stew, but a spoonful of doenjang underneath keeps it from being only hot.
There is no stock in this pot: the mussels open over a splash of rice wine and garlic, and their own juices become the broth. Everything happens fast over high heat, and the main mistake is letting it go on, since the meat shrinks and toughens within minutes. Green onion and cheongyang chili (a hot Korean green pepper) go in only once most shells have opened, adding fragrance and a clean bite. Any broth left at the bottom is worth saving for kalguksu noodles or a pack of ramen.
Chicken thighs simmered gently for 40 minutes make both the broth and the topping: once they pull apart easily, the meat is shredded along the grain and laid over the noodles. A hard bubble would cloud the stock, so the heat stays low throughout, and fish sauce is added only at the very end to keep its aroma. Onion and ginger charred dark on the outside give the stock a sweet, toasty depth. In the Hanoi manner, scallions and bean sprouts top the bowl, and in Hanoi pho ga is a common breakfast. Lime is squeezed in only at the table to keep its scent bright.
King oyster mushrooms are cut lengthwise into thick planks and scored in a crosshatch, which gives them enough heft to stand in for meat over rice. They are seared in a dry pan first to drive off water, then glazed with soy sauce, cooking wine and sugar, and they stay chewy under the sauce.
Well-fermented sour kimchi goes in, and its sourness does the job of a sauce. When the kimchi is salty, the rest of the marinade goes in a little at a time rather than all at once, and wrapping bites in lettuce takes the edge off the heat.
For when you miss the fish cake broth from a street stall, this needs only square sheets of eomuk (Korean fish cake) and radish. Rinse the fish cakes once in hot water to strip off the frying oil, and the broth stays clear to the last spoonful.
Kodari, pollock dried only partway, has a dense, chewy flesh that keeps its grain through a long simmer. It can still break if flipped, so it sits on the bed of radish and gets the broth spooned over it two or three times instead. Rice-rinse water forms the broth and tones down any fishy smell.
The eel is steamed once with a splash of rice wine, and only after the flesh has turned white and given up some of its fat is the soy glaze brushed on for a second round. Brushed onto flesh that has lost some of its fat, the glaze settles in and sets glossy. In Korea it is a common dish for the bok days at the height of summer.
Rabokki adds instant ramen noodles to tteokbokki, the chewy rice cakes simmered in a sweet, spicy gochujang sauce. The rice cakes simmer alone for 5 minutes to soften, and the ramen and fish cakes follow for just 3, because the noodles soak up sauce fast; by the time they are cooked, the sauce has reduced to a thick glaze. Plenty of water at the start allows for that absorption. Half a packet of the ramen seasoning deepens the savoriness, and a layer of cheese turns it into cheese rabokki. Boiled eggs and green onion finish the pot, which is best eaten right away before the noodles swell.
Most of the flavor here comes from the scallions. Thinly sliced and fried until their edges turn golden, they leave behind an oil that coats the shrimp and every grain of rice, so soy sauce and oyster sauce are all it needs.
Perilla oil and shredded perilla leaves make this smell much stronger than the usual potato stir-fry. The soy sauce is poured into an empty spot in the hot pan and allowed to bubble before it is stirred through, and in that moment it picks up a faintly scorched, toasty smell that carries over to the potatoes.
Fish cakes of assorted shapes simmer with shiitake in a kelp and radish broth and come to the table in the pot, seasoned lightly with soup soy sauce so their own flavor stays in front.
Bite into a sea squirt and the little sac bursts, releasing a salty, briny juice. To keep that, the radish and zucchini are cooked through first and the sea squirts get only three or four minutes over high heat at the very end. In April and May, when they are in season and full of juice, the broth itself tastes different.
Steamed in the shell with only green onion and ginger beneath it, abalone keeps its sea-sweet aroma, with seasoning limited to a little soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil spooned over afterward. A shallow crosshatch on the thick side lets heat reach the center so the edges do not toughen while the middle catches up.
Rice cakes, kimchi, eggs and a slice of cheese turn two packs of instant ramen into a loaded snack-bar style bowl. Kimchi and cheese both bring salt, so the seasoning packet tastes stronger than usual if it all goes in at once. The noodles tend to finish before the eggs set, and lifting them out early saves them from going soft.
Siraegi, dried radish greens boiled until tender, steam on top of the rice, and nothing seasons the pot. Each person stirs in a doenjang and soy paste with chili flakes and green onion, a spoonful at a time, and decides how salty the bowl gets.
A light dusting of flour holds moisture in the cut crab and gives the sweet-salty soy glaze something to grip, and it ends up on your fingers as you work through the shells. Buy the crabs live and clean them just before cooking for firm, springy meat; frozen crab loses water as it thaws and turns soft.
Skewered fish cakes and thick slices of radish simmer in anchovy and kelp broth, a soup Koreans set out alongside drinks. The kelp comes out the moment the water starts to boil, which keeps the broth from turning slick.
A full 120g of water parsley (minari) turns an everyday doenjang stew green and sharply aromatic, with a peppery, grassy bite against the fermented soybean broth. The minari simmers for only 2 minutes and comes off the heat while the stems are still crisp, not limp and stringy.
Gizzard shad, a small fish at its fattiest in autumn, stays moist even when braised in a soy and gochugaru sauce. Three deep scores along the back let the sauce reach the thick part of the fish without a long cook. Thick slices of radish packed across the bottom of the pot keep the fish from scorching and turn sweet as they soak up the sauce; the thicker the slices, the sweeter they get. Basting with a spoon takes the place of flipping, which would break the delicate flesh apart. The reduced sauce left in the pot is spooned over steamed rice.
Chicken stock and a separately cooked clam broth, seasoned with nothing but salt, give this Hakodate-style ramen a pale golden soup that tastes clean and briny. Shio ramen traces back to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido, and with no soy or miso to hide behind, every flaw in the stock shows, which makes careful blanching and scrubbing of the bones worth the effort. Toppings stay simple: sliced chashu and blanched spinach.
Poached chicken breast, pulled into fine shreds, turns up in every spoonful. The savory depth of the porridge comes from siraegi (boiled dried radish greens) and garlic sauteed in sesame oil before the rice goes in.
Instead of being stirred into liquid, the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) is fried at the edge of the pan in the fat from the pork, which cooks off its pasty smell, before the blanched cauliflower goes in. There is no broth at all, and the heat goes off while the cauliflower stems still have a little firmness.
In Chungcheong, eotang starts with whole freshwater fish simmered for more than forty minutes until even the flesh dissolves into the broth, which is then strained twice through a fine sieve or cloth to catch the small bones. Radish and doenjang go into that broth for a second simmer, and chili flakes and green onion give it a sharp finish.