689 recipes. Page 28 of 29
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Nanbu wheat crackers broken by hand into a soy-seasoned broth of chicken, burdock and vegetables soften at the edges as they drink up the liquid, while their centers stay chewy. In the Hachinohe area of Aomori, crackers have long gone into soup this way. Snack crackers tend to dissolve, and the ones sold for soup are used instead.
By tradition the broth reaches the table unseasoned, and salt and pepper are added by each person eating. Over 6 to 8 hours of simmering it turns from clear to milky, and the brisket, pulled out after about 2 hours, is sliced thin for the top. Rice or thin noodles go into the bowl with sliced green onion.
Once the doenjang-coated napa greens and bean sprouts have simmered and the broth has turned savory and cloudy, the large pieces of ox blood curd (seonji) are slid in at the edge of the pot. A deep stir with the ladle breaks them apart.
Thin slices of radish simmer first to flavor the broth, because the clams and spinach themselves cook in moments. Turn the heat down as soon as the clams open and the meat stays tender.
Spinach brings a faint bitterness to the doenjang broth, and the wilted leaves leave it tinged a pale green.
Seasoned only with soup soy sauce, the broth stays clear and the grassy note of spinach comes through, a calm bowl to set next to oily or spicy dishes. Firm tofu cut into generous cubes holds together better as it simmers.
Fat from the pork shoulder soaks into radish greens already rubbed with doenjang, and the broth turns heavy and reddish brown. It tastes deeper still after cooling once and reheating.
No meat goes into this one, only dried radish greens, doenjang and anchovy stock. Drying leaves the greens slightly bitter, and that bitterness stays in the pot on purpose. Strip it all out and the soup stops tasting like siraegi-guk.
The brisket is patted dry before it meets the perilla oil. Wet meat tastes boiled instead of toasty, and the radish greens then go into that same oil. That step is where the soup's nutty depth comes from.
Beef brisket is browned in sesame oil, then water and napa cabbage go in. Guk-ganjang, the Korean soy sauce for soups, turns the broth a clear light brown, and a thin film of sesame oil from the beef floats on top with a nutty smell. The stems go in before the leaves; the stems keep a little bite while the leaves turn soft and full of broth.
Thick-cut button mushrooms get 10 minutes in the pot, long enough to chew almost like meat, while the enoki join only for the last 3 minutes and barely wilt.
Napa cabbage, oyster mushrooms and bok choy alternate around the rim of the pot, with the beef spread flat in the center, and the whole thing cooks at the table. The vegetables release water as they go, and the broth starts out lightly seasoned to allow for it.
Seasoned with soup soy sauce, the clear brown broth doubles as the base for tteokguk, rice cake soup. The radish should simmer until a spoon slides through it easily; only then does its sharp bite give way to sweetness.
The broth starts from brisket browned in sesame oil, yet the sprouts keep it from feeling heavy. Cooked too long, mung bean sprouts give off a raw smell. The heat goes off while their heads still snap.
The oxtail soaks in cold water for an hour, gets a quick blanch, and then simmers over low heat for three hours. Left to cool overnight, the broth sets a layer of fat on top that lifts off easily, and the soup is lighter for it. Kkakdugi, cubed radish kimchi, goes on the table with it.
Gunma suiton dough is never rolled or cut. A loose flour batter is simply spooned into dashi already simmering with daikon, carrot, taro, shiitake and fried tofu, and that ease made it an everyday dish that stood in for rice when rice ran short.
Salted shrimp and chili flakes stay out of the pot and go on the table, and each person sets the salt and heat. The boiled pork goes into the bone broth first to flavor it; the sundae follows and only warms through over low heat, which keeps the casings from splitting.
The same soft tofu as in sundubu-jjigae goes in here, but with no chili flakes or chili paste the broth stays clear. Big spoonfuls of tofu are slipped in and left unstirred, and the heating stops once they tremble on a spoon.
Leaving a little of the purple skin on the turnip gives the doenjang broth a soft tint. Turnip is more delicately sweet than Korean radish, with a faint peppery edge, and the soup tastes different from a radish version because of it. Turnips are in season from autumn into early winter.
Everything left after filleting a cod, from the head, backbone and skin to the liver, roe or milt, goes into one big pot here. Jappa means scraps in the Tsugaru dialect of Aomori, yet these parts make a full-bodied winter miso soup. Liver mashed into the broth near the end gives it a soft richness, and fresh milt is treated as a prize. In Tsugaru cod was the fish for welcoming the New Year; families bought a whole large one at year's end and dragged it home over snowy roads, which gave rise to the phrase tara shogatsu, cod New Year.
In inland Yamagata, families and friends gather on riverbanks in autumn to share huge pots of this taro and beef stew at imoni-kai parties. The beef waits until a skewer slides easily into the taro. Added at the start, it toughens and throws off more foam.
Taro comes into season around Chuseok, the Korean harvest holiday, and this soup often appears on the holiday table. Cooked taro has a finer grain than potato: it crumbles softly yet keeps a slight stickiness, and ground perilla seeds turn the broth milky and nutty. The taro is parboiled in its skin and then rubbed in salted water to wash off the slippery coating, which keeps the soup from turning cloudy or gluey.
Taro stems, the stalks of the taro plant, soak up broth like a sponge but keep a firm, springy chew. A generous amount of ground perilla seed, added in stages, makes the soup pale and thick, and when rice goes into the bowl the broth seeps between the grains.
Only two spoonfuls of ground perilla go in, and even with taro stems in the pot this stays close to a clear soup rather than a thick perilla stew. The stems are peeled of their tough outer fibers and the thick ones split by hand, so the chew never turns stringy.