480 recipes. Page 16 of 20
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Too fragile to slice, silken tofu goes onto a flat plate as a whole block with the dressing poured over the top. Out of the package, it rests briefly on a paper towel to shed surface water before moving to the plate. The dressing is soy sauce with chili flakes, garlic, green onion, and sesame oil, and the tofu is served either cold or warmed for a minute in the microwave.
The seasoning is just a teaspoon each of chili flakes, soy sauce and sugar, and the fish cake's own savory saltiness comes through first. A quick dip in boiling water to rinse off surface oil helps that small amount of seasoning soak in rather than slide off.
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.
Freshwater eel is cut into 3 to 4 cm pieces, bones and all, and simmered in a gochujang broth. With the bones still in, the liquid comes out rich, and ground perilla seed stirred in just before the heat goes off thickens it. In Korea it turns up on the table around boknal, the hottest days of summer.
The radish is half-cooked on its own beforehand, so it is seasoned all the way through in the short time the mackerel takes. With just half a tablespoon of gochujang, the soy sauce leads and the heat stays gentle.
Soybean leaves start out earthy and grassy, and as they sit in soy sauce and anchovy fish sauce the raw green smell fades into a salty, fermented savoriness. Tender leaves picked before the first frost are laid over a spoonful of rice and eaten as a wrap, and a light toss with sesame oil softens any that taste too salty.
Chicken cartilage gives a crunch first and then a chew. The longer it cooks, the more that crunch turns tough, so the cartilage is marinated for 10 minutes and then stir-fried hard and fast. Gochujang, chili flakes and hot Cheongyang chilies pile up into a fiery bar snack.
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.
Jjageuli is not supposed to leave much broth behind. Gochujang seasoning is fried in rendered pork fat, thick-cut potatoes go in, and as they simmer they slump and crumble until only a shallow, thick sauce is left in the pot. It sits closer to a rice topping than a soup.
Steamed in the shell, oysters keep the briny liquor that pools around the meat, so they taste of the sea with no added salt. It is a quick way to cook winter oysters from start to finish, and a dip of soy sauce, vinegar and chili flakes puts a sour edge over the salt.
Fruit sweetness from ground pear and onion, the base of the chili paste, cushions the heat. The sharp, prickly garlic smell of the scapes survives fermentation and stays in the kimchi alongside their snap. Thirty minutes in coarse salt is just enough for the stalks to bend a little, which lets the thick paste wrap around them. A short two-hour start at room temperature comes before the fridge, and the flavor turns riper after about two days.
The cucumber here is cooked, but only until it is warm and glossy, never soft in the middle. Soup soy sauce and a little chili flakes are the only seasonings, giving a faint red tint with no real heat. The tofu is browned on its own and folded back in at the end.
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.
Each spoonful brings up chewy webfoot octopus (jjukkumi) together with tofu that has soaked up the red broth. The octopus turns rubbery if it boils long, so the vegetable broth is finished first and the octopus gets only a few minutes in it.
Crunchy bean sprouts and chewy squid and shrimp share one platter, all coated in a thick red sauce. It shows up often as a dish to go with drinks.
How long the stems simmer decides this kimchi: seven minutes in salted water, then half an hour in cold water, takes out the bitterness and the toughness, and undercooked stems keep both. Unlike the soy-pickled version, these butterbur stems are tossed in a red chili paste thickened with glutinous rice porridge. Gentle tossing matters, since squeezing hard breaks the crisp fibers.
A shallow crosshatch scored on the inside of the squid body opens up as it cooks, curling each piece and letting the gochujang sauce work into the cuts. Score too deep and the body tears apart; the knife should only graze the surface.
Half a spoonful of doenjang in the chili paste keeps the heat from turning sharp. The sundae sits on cabbage and onion and simmers at the table; the broth grows stronger as it reduces, and the flame comes down as you eat, with the perilla leaves added last.
This is the everyday pork belly and sour kimchi stew with one addition: a tablespoon of doenjang, fried briefly with the chili flakes before the water goes in. It gives the bottom of the broth a slightly earthier weight. If the kimchi is not sour yet, use half a teaspoon of sugar rather than a few drops of vinegar.
Fermented skate carries a sharp ammonia sting, and steaming it under a gochugaru and gochujang paste tames that edge without erasing it. In Jeolla Province the dish turns up at feasts and ancestral rites, and the smell is the point rather than a flaw.
Ten minutes of salt is all the water dropwort (minari) gets, so the stems stay crisp and the fresh, grassy aroma comes through intact. Even draining is gentle, a light press with the palm, since wringing the stems would cost them that snap. Anchovy fish sauce gives the light herb a savory base, and the fruity tartness of plum syrup softens the chili heat, while finely grated onion binds the paste into one smooth seasoning. Served with fatty pork belly or boiled pork, the herb clears the richness from the palate between bites. It is best eaten cold on the day it is made, before the stems wilt further.
Water from the bean sprouts is what most easily turns this stir-fry thin. They are drained well, added only in the last minute or two, and the whole pan goes onto a plate as soon as the heat is off.
Napa outer leaves (ugeoji) tossed with doenjang go into the broth from boiled beef brisket along with soybean sprouts, and the brisket itself is torn along the grain and returned to the pot. A little chili flake brings mild heat over the doenjang, and the heat goes off while the sprouts still crunch.
Sour kimchi is fried with chili flakes, anchovy stock goes on top, and 200 g of soybean sprouts follow. After that, the lid has one rule: if it goes on, it stays on until the sprouts are cooked, and if it is left off, it stays off the whole time. Lifting it halfway brings up a raw, beany smell.