480 recipes. Page 8 of 20
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Fresh noodles are laid over kimchi and oyster mushrooms, the lid goes on, and they cook in the steam rising from the kimchi juices. Almost no liquid is left at the end, so it looks like a stir-fry, but the sour, spicy kimchi flavor goes right through each strand.
Coarsely grated bottle gourd (lauki) gets only a brief boil before it meets the yogurt and stays soft with a little bite instead of turning to mush. It sits beside spicy curries and flatbreads to cool the palate.
Bone-in pieces of flounder ferment with foxtail millet rice, thick radish strips and chili flakes until the whole mix turns tangy and salty. This version leaves out glutinous rice and fish sauce, so the millet grains stay visible between the fish, and after mixing it still needs 4 to 5 days in a cool place.
Bite-size pieces of webfoot octopus (jjukkumi, a small octopus) are scattered through rice stained red by gochujang sauce. The first sear stops the moment the pieces curl and turn opaque, because they keep cooking while the sauce and rice are stirred in.
Through the doenjang-fried pork comes the faintly earthy smell of Swiss chard. The leaves go limp as they cool, so it is eaten straight from the pan, spooned over rice.
Without the tripe of sundae-gopchang-bokkeum, this stir-fry leans on cabbage, onion, and scallion for a lighter plate. The vegetables are cut thick so they still have bite after cooking, and soy sauce in the gochujang glaze makes it as salty as it is spicy.
Pork makchang is boiled once before cleaning and blanched for another 7 minutes after. The gochujang marinade works into its wrinkled surface, and slow cooking over medium heat turns it into a sticky brown glaze. The blanching does not finish the cooking; the thick parts stay on until they pass 71°C, and then it is snipped with scissors and served with perilla leaves or shredded green onion.
A generous amount of ground perilla seed turns this gamjatang (pork spine and potato stew) pale and creamy, and with the same chili flakes it still tastes milder than the usual red pot.
The pork back ribs simmer on their own for 25 minutes, until the meat pulls easily off the bone, before the potatoes and seasoning go in. The perilla leaves are laid on top in large pieces at the very end; cooked too long, they turn astringent instead of fragrant.
Half the pleasure is digging out the meat lodged between the vertebrae and cartilage, which after an hour's simmer comes away with no effort. The broth is seasoned with a spoonful of doenjang plus chili flakes and soy sauce. It works as a companion to soju or as a meal, with the broth spooned over rice.
Wild chive stems should only just bend after salting, which takes eight minutes and leaves their green, oniony scent intact. The roots are left long because the root end carries the aroma this kimchi depends on.
Chewy canned whelk, slippery somyeon and crisp cucumber and onion all meet in one spicy-sour gochujang dressing, a classic drinking snack in Korea. A spoonful of the canning liquid stirred into the sauce deepens its savory base, while a quick rinse of the whelk itself tames the salt. Ice-cold water right after boiling keeps the noodles firm and bouncy once the dressing goes on.
Unlike kimchi, mu-saengchae skips fermentation: the julienned radish is dressed and eaten the same day, with its crunch intact. Ten minutes under coarse salt pulls water from the strips so the chili-flake dressing clings instead of sliding off. Anchovy fish sauce lays a savory base under the radish's clean, mild flavor. Fresh from the bowl it snaps; after a night in the fridge it softens into a lightly pickled side with a different character. It is a standard partner for fatty dishes like samgyeopsal or braised short ribs.
Steamed eggplant, cooled and torn along the grain, comes apart in silky, slippery strands. They are dressed with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili flakes and kept cold, and the more dressing you use, the closer it gets to a chilled salad.
Daegu's junghwa bibimbap, a Chinese-Korean rice bowl, piles pork, squid, shrimp, and cabbage, stir-fried over high heat until no loose liquid is left, onto rice and tops it with a runny-yolked fried egg. Once the burner is on high there is no time to stop, and the chili powder, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and garlic are measured out beforehand.
With 700 g of pork neck cooked in one go, there is enough for four people to wrap in lettuce. Gochugaru goes in alongside the gochujang, adding a drier, more powdery heat on top of the paste's.
As the liquid reduces, starch from the rice cakes thickens the sauce into a glossy film on the cakes and fish cake. Stir in only half the seasoning paste at first and add the rest as you taste. Boiled eggs, sundae, or fried snacks alongside make it the full market-stall spread.
Garlic scapes stay tough if they go into the pan raw. So they spend just 30 seconds in boiling water, get rinsed in cold water right away, and then cook with the gochujang sauce in a pan for about 3 minutes. Done, they bend easily but still snap when you bite.
Blue crab in its spring or autumn season is halved and simmered in a radish broth with a little doenjang and chili flakes. The shells turn red well before the meat is cooked through. Crack the claws with the back of a knife beforehand and the meat comes out easily at the table.
This stew starts from plain water instead of stock: donggeurang-ttaeng, small pan-fried patties of meat, tofu, and vegetables, already carry enough seasoning to flavor the pot. Frozen patties work fine as long as they lie in a single layer under the broth and heat right through to the middle.
The tofu is cut into thick slices and pan-fried golden before it goes into the doenjang broth. That browned surface lets it take constant ladlings of sauce without falling apart, and it turns a deeper brown as the doenjang soaks in.
No soy sauce goes into this pickle: deodeok, a mountain root prized for its fragrance, sits in vinegar, sugar and salt alone, leaving its own aroma in front. Pounding the split roots flat with the back of a knife loosens the dense fibers and lets the brine work its way between them, and a day of chilling turns the texture pleasantly chewy. Chili flakes and sesame oil go on only at serving time, which keeps the red bright, and the dish is served cold.
Gochujang and doenjang dissolved together into anchovy-kelp stock give this Gangwon-style knife-cut noodle soup its red, fiery broth. It comes from the province's mountainous interior, where it warmed workers through the cold seasons. The chili paste brings rounded sweetness and heat, the soybean paste an earthy depth, and an extra spoon of gochugaru sharpens the finish. Potato breaks down at the edges as it simmers, thickening the soup with no added starch, so the noodles end up in something closer to a stew than a clear broth. Fresh noodles need constant stirring for the first 30 seconds or their starch clumps, and after that a steady medium heat with the odd scrape of the bottom keeps the thick broth from catching or reducing too far.
Doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, carries this cucumber side dish, with only half a tablespoon of chili flakes, and it tastes gentler than the red, spicy oi-muchim. The cucumbers are cut fairly thick and salted only briefly to stay cold, juicy and crisp under a thin coat of paste.