480 recipes. Page 14 of 20
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Drying makes radish sweeter and chewy, and that chew is the reason to use it. The strips get only 20 minutes in cold water; any longer and they turn limp like fresh radish. Rice syrup in the gochujang dressing gives it its shine.
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.
Pieces of catfish simmer in a gochujang broth, and thin pinches of flour dough go in partway through, so fish and sujebi dumplings come out of the same pot. Before cutting, the catfish is rubbed well with salt to strip off its slippery coating, which otherwise leaves a muddy taste in the broth.
Bracken fern tossed with soup soy sauce, garlic, and gochugaru before simmering carries its seasoning right into each stalk, while beef brisket and radish keep the broth fairly clear with a sharp chili edge. The fern turns tender only over a gentle, medium-low simmer.
Hairtail is so soft and oily that stirring it with a ladle breaks it apart. Here the pot itself gets a shake now and then to move the sauce around underneath, and broth is spooned over the fish only in the last few minutes with the lid off.
Instead of salt, this Jeolla version seasons the scallions with thick fermented anchovy sauce, myeolchi jinjeot, which gives them a funky, deep saltiness. The sauce goes only on the white stalks at first, since they are thick and need a head start, and whatever drains off is stirred back into the chili paste rather than thrown away. Pear juice sweetens the paste in place of sugar for a cleaner finish. The green tops get only a light swipe of seasoning, because squeezing them makes the kimchi taste grassy.
Korean myeongnanjeot is normally plain salted, not chili-cured like Japanese mentaiko, and here the chili flakes stop at a faint orange tint on the surface. Two or three folds with a spoon and the mixing is over. Burst eggs make it mushy and take away the pop.
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.
This is just the broth for mulhoe, Korean raw fish in an icy, spicy soup, made on its own ahead of time. Six tablespoons of vinegar and some plum syrup go into the gochujang base, and the 100ml of soda is stirred in last and slowly so the fizz survives. It can rest in the fridge for a day, then move to the freezer an hour or two before serving to turn slushy.
Made with plump winter oysters, it smells of the sea from the first spoonful. With lots of tofu and a chili-red broth, it sits closer to a hearty, spicy stew for rice than to a clear oyster soup.
In Jeju, galchi-jorim is made with plenty of liquid, close to a stew, and rice gets mixed into whatever sauce is left. Potato goes under the fish along with the radish, another Jeju habit, and its starch gives the sauce some body.
Salted shrimp and anchovy fish sauce layer two kinds of seafood savoriness, and glutinous rice paste thickens the seasoning so it clings to the scallions even after they release water. Six hours at room temperature plus a day of chilling make it ready for grilled pork belly or bossam, and after three days or more its lactic sourness suits stews and stir-fries.
Ogeurakji is North Gyeongsang dialect for dried radish shriveled and curled up, and the name covers the seasoned side dish made from it. Jocheong (grain syrup) stands in for sugar, which makes the chili dressing cling heavy and glossy, and anchovy fish sauce with soy sauce does the salting. It needs a hard kneading by hand or the seasoning just slides around. Eat it right away, or give it a day in the fridge for the red to reach the center of each strip.
Kongbul, short for kongnamul bulgogi, piles soybean sprouts onto spicy gochujang pork so every bite of meat comes with a crunch. The sprouts only get about a minute over high heat, so the pork sauce has to be reduced to a thick glaze before they go in, or the water they release leaves everything soupy. It is served spooned over rice.
Several beef offal cuts with very different chews, such as small intestine and omasum, go into one pot of milky bone broth. Chili flakes and garlic make it spicy, and half a spoonful of doenjang mixed into the seasoning paste tamps down any remaining offal smell. It is a hot pot for the drinking table, alongside soju.
The nutty smell of sour kimchi fried in perilla oil meets the briny smell of fresh oysters in one pot. It is a winter stew, made when the kimchi has gone properly sour and the oysters are plump.
The hairtail pieces sit in lightly salted water for five minutes and are then patted completely dry. A dry surface is what lets the chili and soy sauce sink into the fish.
Kale's strong green smell mellows as it ferments while the leaves keep a firm bite, giving a kimchi that chews more than napa cabbage kimchi does. Julienned radish adds crunch, and soup soy sauce, rather than fish sauce, supplies the salty depth. Pear puree, or apple puree in its place, wraps the chili heat in fruit sweetness and balances the slightly bitter finish of the kale. It tastes best from the day after making, once the seasoning has settled into the leaves overnight.
Oiji are cucumbers put down in brine for a month or more in summer, when cucumbers are everywhere, and they come out with a firm, chewy crunch nothing like a fresh one. Straight from the brine they are too salty. The slices soak in cold water for about 30 minutes, though a bite of one slice tells you more than the timer.
Soybean sprouts pick up the beefy richness of thin-sliced brisket (chadolbaegi), because the fat the brisket renders is the only oil used for the chili sauce. Brisket this thin browns in a minute or two and the sprouts should stay crunchy, which makes the whole cook brief and fast. Blot off only the excess fat; wiping the pan dry leaves nothing to fry the paste in.
Most of the work in this spicy beef offal soup happens before cooking: the mixed tripe is scrubbed with salt and flour into every fold, then soaked in cold water to draw out blood and odor. After a quick blanch the first water is thrown out, and a 50-minute simmer in fresh water softens the thick pieces while building the stock.
A handful of crown daisy goes into the broth once the oysters and tofu are cooked, and the heat goes off as soon as it starts to wilt. The seasoning is soup soy sauce, which keeps the broth from turning dark.
Skate flesh is threaded with soft cartilage, which gives it a pleasant chew. It braises in a gochugaru and soy liquid over heat low enough that the surface barely moves, almost steaming.
Built for kimjang, the big winter kimchi-making session, this recipe works through 10 kg of salted napa cabbage at once. The radish strips are tossed with the chili flakes first and turn red before the fish sauce, salted shrimp and garlic join them, which keeps the seasoning a clean, even color. Mustard greens and water dropwort cut into the seasoning give it a clean, slightly bitter aroma. Fresh oysters are optional and make the kimchi taste cooler and brighter, but because they also sour it faster, they go only into the containers that will be opened first. After one to two days at room temperature, the kimchi moves to the fridge and keeps its flavor for two to three weeks.