480 recipes. Page 1 of 20
Look for gochugaru when buying Korean chili flakes. American chili powder can be a spice blend rather than plain ground peppers.
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Read the ingredients, not just the English word "chili". For example, McCormick Chili Powder contains other spices, salt and garlic as well as chili pepper. That blend adds seasoning beyond the pepper called for in a gochugaru recipe.
Check whether your recipe specifies coarse flakes or finely ground pepper, then match the package description. Do not assume the same grind or heat from the red color alone. Gochujang is a paste and has a separate amount when both appear in a recipe.
Cumin, turmeric, and chili cling to the potatoes and cauliflower as a dry coating instead of a sauce. A lid traps steam to cook the centers, then it comes off and the pan dries out, leaving the cauliflower edges lightly charred and the potatoes whole and fluffy. It is an everyday North Indian side, cooked everywhere from roadside dhabas in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to home kitchens.
No heat touches the garlic chives: they are simply tossed with soy sauce, vinegar and gochugaru. Pressing or squeezing draws water out of the stems, so the tossing is a light lift for no more than 20 seconds, and the dish is served right away or within five minutes.
Small rolls of plain seasoned rice with no filling sit beside spicy squid and seasoned radish, and you take a bite of one, then the other. It is the Tongyeong way: salt and sesame oil for the rice, and all the heat in the side dishes.
Canned tuna is already cooked, so the zucchini goes in first and the tuna joins only for the last 2 minutes. Added at the start, the tuna breaks into crumbs while the zucchini sheds a lot of water. Soup soy sauce and gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) go in sparingly, enough to tint the zucchini red without making any liquid.
Semi-dried squid browns fast in a buttered pan and stays chewy. Shallow scores on the inside of the body give the soy and syrup glaze somewhere to sink in. Once done, the pieces go onto skewers or into paper cups.
Gizzard shad are small enough to eat bones and all, and shallow scores along each fish do two jobs: they let the gochujang glaze reach the flesh and cut the fine pin bones so they are barely noticed. Syrup in the glaze caramelizes into a glossy amber coat, but it also burns quickly, which keeps the pan at medium the whole time.
This is the spicy monkfish soup Koreans go looking for the morning after, made at home. Monkfish flesh is soft and breaks apart easily, so once it is in the pot it barely gets stirred. If you can get the liver, adding it separately makes the broth deeper.
Some of the batter's liquid is kimchi brine, which turns even the plain batter red and gives it a sour tang. Leftovers crisp up again almost completely in a dry pan with no oil.
Gochujang toasts in rendered pork fat before any broth goes in, and that spicy red oil gives the stew more body than simply boiling everything together. Zucchini half-moons simmer for 6 minutes, enough to take on seasoning without collapsing into mush.
Agujjim began in the 1970s at the fish market in Masan's Odong-dong, where vendors cooked unsold monkfish over high heat with bean sprouts and chili sauce, closer to stir-frying than braising. No water is added; the sprouts release enough liquid to pool in the pan, and a little starch slurry, added bit by bit, sets the thickness. Once the fish is gone, rice often gets mixed into the leftover sauce.
Napa cabbage salted for just 20 minutes and tossed straight into a gochugaru dressing gives kimchi with no sourness at all: the red pepper heat and the savory anchovy fish sauce come through cleanly. The short salting bends the thick ribs slightly while keeping them much crisper than fermented kimchi. Sesame oil and sesame seeds are added at the very end, so a nutty aroma sits over the chili. Geotjeori, as this fresh style is called in Korea, is served alongside grilled pork belly or doenjang-jjigae (fermented soybean paste stew), and it fills in when the jar of aged kimchi runs empty. It is best right after mixing, and leftovers keep a day or two chilled.
With grated fresh apple handling part of the sweetness and apple cider vinegar bringing the tang, the gochujang sauce tastes lighter and fresher. It is not fruit-sweetened alone, though: oligosaccharide syrup goes in too. Thirty minutes in the fridge takes the raw edge off the gochujang and lets the apple's acidity settle into it. Half a boiled egg on top turns the thin somyeon noodles into an easy light meal.
Pork belly, fried until the fat turns translucent and the edges crisp, gives this arrabbiata a richer, meatier base than the usual garlic and chili tomato sauce. The heat comes from Korean gochugaru instead of dried Italian chili, so it lands as a familiar, warm Korean spiciness.
Korean garlic chives (buchu) are far sharper and more pungent than Western chives, and this side dish keeps them raw to hold on to that bite. Doenjang, a fermented soybean paste, clings to the flat leaves so every mouthful carries its salty depth, while vinegar lightens the finish and chili flakes leave a gentle heat. A 30-second rinse in cold water is enough, and longer soaking dulls the aroma. It is made right before the meal and belongs next to a bowl of rice.
Bite-size potato cubes roast on a hot tray rather than in a fryer, picking up firm, crisp edges before a smoky, spicy tomato sauce is spooned over them. Rinsing the cut cubes until the water runs clearer, drying every surface and spacing them apart on the tray gives those edges their crunch, since wet or crowded pieces steam.
The mashed potato is sealed inside whole wheat dough and rolled out with it, so the filling ends up as a thin layer running through the whole bread. It is seasoned with garam masala, chili and chopped cilantro, and a good one leaves the pan with golden spots and a few puffed patches.
Pollock innards are salted for 30 minutes, then mixed with gochugaru, garlic, ginger and fish sauce and left in the fridge for at least three days to become jeotgal, a Korean salted relish. Most of the work is in the first wash: the innards are rubbed in cold water again and again until the rinse water runs clearer and the surface is less slick.
Fatty beef large intestine is glazed in a sweet, spicy soy sauce and set over rice with onion that has soaked in cold water, a raw egg yolk and fresh wasabi. The wasabi stays on the side, unmixed, and goes on a little at a time with each bite.
In North Indian homes this potato dish shows up next to dal and rice on an ordinary weeknight, with methi (fenugreek leaves) bringing a bitter edge. Fresh methi is strongly bitter with an earthy smell that softens once it hits the hot pan, and it goes in only after the potatoes have cooked under a lid with cumin, turmeric and chili. When fresh leaves are hard to find, dried kasuri methi is rubbed between the palms and added at the end.
Frozen dumplings go into the pan straight from the freezer. Once the water and lid go on, the browned bottoms soften for a while, and they crisp up again when the lid comes off and the water cooks away. Serve with soy sauce mixed with vinegar and chili flakes.
Butterfish has such fine, soft flesh that it falls apart easily when turned. The fillets go skin-side down and are left alone for a good while, then flipped once with a wide spatula. The gochujang paste, loosened with plum syrup, is brushed on very thinly, and a little lemon is squeezed over once the fish is plated.
Altang uses fresh, unsalted pollock roe. Make it with cured myeongran and the broth turns salty on the same amount of soy sauce, so check the label for unsalted when you shop.
Wavy ramen strands leave ridges and pockets across the surface of this pancake, and those uneven spots fry up especially crunchy. The noodles are boiled for only two minutes so they stay firm; the heat of the pan finishes them and they keep their spring instead of collapsing into the batter.
This monkfish stew lands between a clear soup and a heavily seasoned jjigae, with a cloudier, bolder broth than either and large pieces of firm fish. A small spoonful of doenjang tames the fish's odor, and gelatin from under the monkfish skin melts into the pot and thickens the broth with no starch.