689 recipes. Page 7 of 29
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Pushing the doenjang through a fine sieve before it meets the broth keeps lumps out, and lumps are where bitterness concentrates. Anchovy stock and fermented soybean paste reinforce each other, so the soup tastes complete without extra seasoning.
The white fish is pan-fried until golden, then braised in soy sauce, sugar, ginger, green onion, and cooking wine until the sauce turns glossy. The sauce is poured in around the edge of the pan, not over the fish, to keep the seared crust from lifting off.
Cooked with doenjang instead of soy sauce, bracken picks up a deeper fermented smell and a heavier taste that stands up to its bitterness. The paste is loosened in water before it goes in, which keeps it from catching on the bottom of the pan as it simmers.
Chopped fish cake crisps slightly at the edges in hot oil, and its salty, savory flavor spreads through every grain of rice. Because the fish cake is already seasoned, the soy sauce stays modest and any extra salt waits until after tasting.
Mung bean jelly (cheongpomuk) is nearly tasteless and breaks easily, and keeping the pieces whole takes most of the care in a stir-fry. A 30-second blanch firms the surface a little and washes off loose starch, which helps the soy sauce stick.
As cabbage and onion wilt over high heat, the moisture they release loosens the gochujang sauce so it coats every slice of sundae, Korean blood sausage. Add rice cakes and it becomes tteoksuni; some finish it with cheese on top.
Pork skirt comes from the diaphragm. The coarse grain gives a firm chew, and the meat is cut across it. Browning tells you when to turn the pieces, not when they are done; that is decided by the center of the thickest piece reaching 63°C.
The broth of this soup gets its flavor from the gourd. Thin squares of white bottle gourd flesh simmer for ten minutes until translucent, giving a mild, clean taste, and only then is the small octopus added; once cooked, it is cut with scissors and shared among the bowls.
The batter is nothing but soaked, ground mung beans, no wheat flour, which makes it dense and nutty, and each round goes into the pan a full 1.5 cm thick, so one is a meal. Blanched mung bean sprouts give the thick middle some crunch.
Chonggak kimchi, made from small whole radishes with their greens, replaces the usual napa cabbage kimchi, so the stew has chunks of radish with real bite instead of soft leaves. Keeping the pot at a gentle bubble stops the radish from turning mushy.
The cartilage near the wing joints softens the longer it braises, which changes the chew when you tear the meat off the bone. The wings reduce uncovered and get turned two or three times so the glaze works into the joints. Eaten with the fingers, they often end up next to beer or soju.
Thick-sliced shiitake simmer in anchovy-kelp stock with doenjang, layering the mushroom aroma over the paste's mellow, fermented depth before the broth is poured over plump udon. Onion adds quiet sweetness that keeps the salt in check, and a pinch of gochugaru leaves a faint warmth at the finish. Compared with a Japanese dashi-based udon broth, this one is earthier and heavier, closer to a hearty Korean stew.
Sugar melted to a deep caramel coats chunks of pork belly before soy sauce, dark soy, Shaoxing wine, ginger, and scallion go in for a slow, quiet braise. At the end the reduced sauce clings to the pieces as a thin reddish-brown glaze rather than leaving them in broth. The caramel is the moment that decides the dish: a few seconds too long and the whole sauce turns bitter.
Slice this Korean omelette roll and you get yellow rings flecked with carrot and scallion, built from thin sheets of egg rolled up one over another, which leaves the layers soft. It sits in lunchboxes and on the everyday rice table, and a splash of milk keeps it tender even after it cools. Most failures come from the pan: too hot and the outside browns, too cool and the layers refuse to stick together.
The pan goes on until it smokes, and scallions fry for 30 seconds to make a scallion oil. The eggs come last: once the rice is fried, it is pushed to the edges and the eggs are scrambled in the cleared center before everything is mixed. Leftover ham, kimchi, shrimp or canned tuna can go in too.
Before the rehydrated chwinamul (aster scaber, a Korean mountain green) goes near the pan, it is dressed by hand with soup soy sauce, minced garlic and perilla oil, the way a namul side would be. Seasoned first and cooked second, every strand ends up evenly salted.
Seared tripe, briefly warmed sundae (Korean blood sausage), and cabbage that keeps some bite all share one pan, each with a different chew. Equal parts gochujang and gochugaru make the heat unmistakable.
Deep crosshatch scoring makes the cuttlefish curl open like a flower over high heat, and every gap fills with a glossy red gochujang glaze.
Canned silkworm pupae are drained and rinsed rather than heated in the can liquid, then simmered in fresh water. By the time chili flakes and cheongyang pepper turn the broth red, the pupae's strong smell has mellowed, and the heat depends on how many chili seeds stay in. It goes to the table steaming, as a drinking snack.
No flour or egg goes into this batter; the starch in the ground mung beans is what holds each pancake together. Soaking the beans yourself takes more than 6 hours, and that time has to be planned in. Pressed over medium heat, the outside forms a golden crust around the pork and kimchi.
Boiled radish greens and blanched loach simmer in anchovy stock seasoned with doenjang and gochujang, and three tablespoons of perilla seed powder at the end thicken it to something close to porridge. More radish greens push it toward bitter and chewy; more perilla powder makes it nuttier.
Braised a long time with bone-in chicken, the radish turns brown from all the chicken stock and chili sauce it takes in. The potatoes crumble at the edges and thicken the sauce.
Cooked straight in the doenjang broth instead of a separate pot, thin somyeon take on the paste's flavor and lend the soup a little body. The bowl needs to reach the table the moment the heat goes off, before the fine noodles drink up the liquid. Potato, onion, and zucchini supply all the sweetness, making it an easy weeknight soup with a short ingredient list.
It looks like a bowl of noodles, but igoneri from Sado Island in Niigata is a seaweed sheet. Ego seaweed is cooked down, set thin on a tray, rolled up, and cut into ribbons that loosen in the bowl, then topped with chopped long onion, grated ginger, lemon peel, and soy sauce.