689 recipes. Page 20 of 29
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Well-fermented sour kimchi is cut without shaking off its seasoning, so that paste goes into the broth too, and it simmers with pork shoulder that has a good streak of fat before thick slices of tofu go on at the end.
Oily Pacific saury can braise for a good twenty minutes in a spicy soy broth and still come out moist. Laying the fish in a single layer over thick radish slices, and pouring water in around the edge rather than over the top, keeps the soft flesh in whole pieces. Skimming the foam when it first boils keeps the sauce clean, and spooning the liquid over the fish midway seasons the exposed top. The liquid is cooked down until only a shallow layer remains, which coats both the fish and the radish. Whatever sauce is left gets spooned onto rice.
Dough made from sendango, a fermented sweet potato preserve, is pressed through a dedicated extruder called a rokubei-segi so short, thick noodles drop straight into boiling water. The dish has been made in Shimabara and Tsushima in Nagasaki since the Edo period. The noodles are smooth outside, chewy inside, and faintly sweet from the potato. Once cooked, they are moved straight to cold water and rinsed to wash off the harsh surface. They are served in a clear broth of burdock, carrot, and shiitake seasoned with two soy sauces and sake, topped with fish cake and scallion.
The Spam does most of the seasoning. There is only a splash of soy sauce, and cubes of Spam browned at the edges give salty, crisp bites all through the rice.
Sour, long-aged kimchi and canned tuna are stir-fried together and spooned over hot rice. The tuna goes in last and is turned over just a few times in big folds, so it stays in chunks that take on the kimchi seasoning rather than breaking into flakes. Very sour kimchi can take about half a teaspoon more sugar, and canned mackerel works in place of tuna.
Unlike milky seolleongtang, galbitang should come out nearly clear, yet the short ribs still leave a faint richness from their fat. For that clarity the ribs are soaked to draw out blood, then blanched and rinsed before the real simmer starts. Leftover broth sets like jelly in the fridge.
Mackerel or beltfish both work for this spicy fish stew. The radish gets a five-minute head start, then the fish pieces are laid in a single layer and simmered with the lid slightly open to let the fishy steam escape.
Canned saury comes with bones already softened, so draining and rinsing it cuts the cooking time roughly in half, while fresh saury takes longer to cook through. Either way the oily flesh holds its own against a sauce of gochujang and gochugaru, and the radish underneath turns into a sweet, sauce-soaked braise of its own.
Glass noodles, shrimp, squid, pork, napa cabbage, and wood ear fill a clear chicken broth, finished with half a hard-boiled egg on top. The dish came from Fuzhou in China's Fujian province, where it was a celebration food, and reached Kumamoto by way of Nagasaki in the late Meiji era. Today it appears at Chinese restaurants and home tables in central Kumamoto as lunch, dinner, or a meal after drinking. The seafood is added only after the pork and firm vegetables have cooked, which keeps the shrimp and squid from turning rubbery. To keep the broth clear, the glass noodles are boiled and rinsed separately, warmed in the soup only at the end, and the heat is cut as soon as the sesame oil and scallion are added.
Think of soft tofu stew (sundubu jjigae) made with just a cup of broth and poured straight over rice. Pork belly is cooked first so gochugaru and garlic can bloom in its fat, which gives the small amount of broth its heat. An egg cracked into the center and cooked only until the white just sets adds a soft, rich finish.
Mild, pan-browned tofu breaks up the sharp sourness of aged kimchi in every bite. The finishing oil is perilla rather than sesame, drizzled once the heat is off so its nutty aroma survives and smooths out the kimchi's fermented intensity.
Short ribs simmer with radish for an hour before octopus joins them, and the pot ends up part beef soup, part seafood soup. Koreans also make it for boknal, the hottest days of summer.
Kimchi, ham, and tofu, all common refrigerator staples, come together into something close to a pared-down budae jjigae. Frying the kimchi for 2 minutes first tames its sourness so it blends with the salty ham and the sweet heat of gochujang instead of competing.
Collagen from the oxtail joints melts into the pot over a long simmer, thickening the sauce to a glossy, sticky finish while the meat slips off the bone. The tails first simmer for 90 minutes with just green onion and ginger, so the meat is tender before the soy sauce and sugar are added. Radish and carrot join for the last stretch, sweetening the sauce and soaking it up. Chilled, the sauce sets like jelly and melts again on reheating, and lifting off the fat that hardens on top makes the braise taste cleaner. The dish is a fixture of Korean holiday tables.
Beef shank, first fried with doubanjiang (fermented chili bean paste), simmers in a soy broth until it splits under a chopstick, then goes over wheat noodles in big chunks. The broth is dark with soy and only gently hot, and a few blanched bok choy leaves add some green.
The eggs are cooked first until barely set and lifted out, then large tomato wedges go into the same pan with soy sauce and a little sugar. Some of the tomato breaks down into a thin sauce and the rest stays in pieces. The eggs return for a quick fold, and whatever red juice is left in the pan goes over the rice too.
The octopus is already boiled, so the pan only has to warm it through and coat it in gochujang sauce. The heat goes off the moment it starts to visibly shrink, and the onion and carrot are left a little underdone so they keep some crunch.
Potatoes and ground perilla seed cook in anchovy broth until it turns an opaque ivory. There is no doenjang and no seaweed, and no oil either; the body comes from potato starch and the perilla itself. It rarely appears on restaurant menus and belongs to winter meals at home.
The blood curd (seonji) is cut in large pieces, so every spoonful catches a soft chunk, and the broth, with ugeoji (outer napa cabbage leaves) and soybean sprouts, is earthy and spicy. Haejang refers to easing a hangover, and this is what people reach for the morning after drinking.
Steaming a whole blue crab keeps more of its sweet juices inside the shell than boiling does, and the meat comes out briny and moist. In spring and autumn the crabs are full of roe and tomalley, which adds plenty to eat beyond the white meat. A simple dip of soy sauce sharpened with vinegar brings the sweetness forward. Eating it is hands-on work, cracking each leg joint and pulling the meat out piece by piece.
It tastes like Chinese home-style tomato and scrambled egg turned into a noodle soup, with sweet-sour tomato broth, soft egg curds and fresh noodles. The eggs are folded briefly and lifted out while still slightly wet, then return for only a minute at the end; fully cooked at the start, they would toughen in the final simmer. Pressing the tomatoes as they cook draws out the red juice that lets the pieces and the stock blend instead of sitting apart, and cooking them down well deepens the savory flavor. A little soy sauce and sugar only round off the tomato's acidity. Fresh noodles cook fast in the hot broth and come off the heat while the centers are still slightly firm.
This takes the Chinese home classic of tomato and scrambled egg (xihongshi chao dan) and adds rice to the same pan. Sweet-sour tomato juice stains the rice red, with big, soft pieces of egg running through it.
It is called a stir-fry, but for the first few minutes the lid stays on. Bean sprouts laid on the bottom let out enough water to keep the gochujang from scorching, and a final blast of heat reduces that liquid into a thick sauce that coats the octopus.
The clams spend an hour purging in salted water in the fridge, which rules this out as a last-minute soup. No stock goes in; thin potato slices shed a little starch into the clam broth and soften it.