683 recipes. Page 10 of 29
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Thin bulgogi-cut beef and ripe kimchi are fried in sesame oil until red oil starts to gather in the pot, and that is when the water goes in. The tofu is added late but still gets ten more minutes, enough to soak up the kimchi broth all the way through.
There is no salting the eggplant to draw out water. It softens on its own under the lid, in the same pot as browned pork shoulder, and picks up the rendered fat along with the soy and chili, which makes it far richer than eggplant braised alone.
Think of a pan of dakgalbi with udon added. Gochujang-marinated chicken thigh, cabbage and thin slices of sweet potato cook first, and the thick udon then takes on a heavy coat of that sauce.
A mustard dressing gives these sprouts a nose-tingling heat, softened by the sweet tartness of vinegar and sugar. Mustard mixed ahead of time develops a sharper pungency. Unlike the usual seasoned bean sprouts, this one is always served cold, and the chill makes both the mustard and the crunch more pronounced. Overcooked sprouts go soft and lose the snap the dish depends on. Because cucumber and carrot carry a lot of water, the cucumber is salted and pressed first to keep the sauce from going thin. Set beside fatty mains like samgyeopsal or bulgogi, it clears the palate.
The first thing you taste is ground perilla seed (deulkkae), which clings to the sprouts in a pale, nutty coating. The sprouts steam in a little water under a lid rather than boiling, so they stay crunchy and hold less water.
Tuna gimbap is on nearly every Korean gimbap shop menu. Well-drained tuna mixed with mayonnaise runs down the center, surrounded by carrot, spinach, thin egg strips and danmuji, yellow pickled radish.
Seasoned with nothing but soy sauce and sesame oil, it has no heat at all. On the plate, golden pan-fried tofu sits among orange carrot and green pepper.
Ice-cold shredded cabbage, lettuce, and cucumber sit under hot, crisp frozen dumplings, mixing two temperatures and two kinds of crunch in every forkful. The dressing of gochujang, vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil tastes sweet, sour, and spicy all at once. The dumplings are store-bought frozen ones, and they go on just before eating so they stay crisp.
With nothing but coarse salt on the pork, the meat itself carries almost all the flavor, and the quality of the belly or neck shows in every bite. Garlic roasted at the edge of the same pan, a sesame oil and salt dip and lettuce leaves turn each piece into a wrap.
Soybean pulp (kongbiji, the solids left from making soy milk or tofu) drinks up the anchovy stock as it cooks, and with the pre-fried ground pork and sour kimchi mixed through it, the pot ends up thick enough that a spoon leaves a hollow behind.
The eggplants are steamed whole, then torn by hand along the grain instead of sliced. The torn surface is rough, and the soy dressing clings to it. It is a summer side dish for when eggplants are everywhere, and it can go to the table chilled.
Slippery acorn jelly and fine wheat somyeon sit together in cold, tangy dongchimi broth, the liquid from radish water kimchi. Every mouthful mixes two kinds of softness. At least 1 hour in the fridge sharpens the broth's sweet-tangy balance. The jelly holds thin strips best when it is cut straight from the fridge, and the boiled noodles turn springy only after a hands-on rub under cold water strips off their surface starch. Kimchi brings a spicy edge and cucumber a cool crunch, while sesame oil stays in the background, just enough to stop the noodles sticking without masking the broth's clean acidity. It suits hot summer days when appetite runs low.
Fermented tea leaves, bitter and deeply savory, anchor this Burmese salad, while shredded cabbage and chopped tomato lighten their weight. Roasted peanuts and fried garlic chips add a salty crunch to every bite. Dressing the leaves first with lime juice, sesame oil and chili flakes, then letting them sit for 5 minutes, softens the bitterness before the vegetables join. In Myanmar it is eaten as a snack as well as part of a meal.
Bite into a plump, jade-green stonecrop leaf and a grassy, faintly tart juice bursts out. Heat ruins the leaves, and so does sitting in the dressing too long, which is why they are never blanched and get tossed only just before eating.
No stove needed: drained canned tuna stirred with mayonnaise is spooned over a bowl of warm rice, with soy sauce, sesame oil and crushed seaweed on top. Press the tuna in a sieve until no more oil drips, then break up the big flakes with a fork so the mayo coats it evenly.
The sourer the kimchi, the better this turns out. It fries with the pork for a good while, until it deepens to a dark red and picks up the taste of the meat.
Without any meat, the filling leans on firm tofu, cabbage, garlic chives, and short-cut Korean sweet potato glass noodles, which give each bite an even, springy chew while the chives stand in for green onion. Pan-frying sets a thin golden crust on the bottom while the top of the wrapper stays soft.
In spring, when dureup is in season, the blanched aralia shoots are rolled up in thin pork belly, threaded onto skewers, brushed with gochujang paste and grilled. The shoots get only 20 seconds in boiling water to keep their crunch and bitter, green aroma.
Bean sprouts go into a milky broth made from toasted dried pollack, and it is the soup many Koreans make the morning after drinking. The sprouts cook briefly with the lid off, so their stems stay crisp.
The eggplant goes into the simmering soy sauce cut side down and is left alone for the first two minutes, long enough for the spongy flesh to drink in the sauce.
Two separately cooked toppings make this bowl of dressed noodles: pan-seared tofu and stir-fried ripe kimchi. Pressing the tofu dry before it meets a hot pan gives it a golden crust and a soft center, a mild counterweight to the gochujang dressing. Brief frying takes the sharp sourness off well-fermented kimchi and pushes its savory side forward. The noodles end up spicy, sweet and tangy without turning harsh.
Hot bulgogi on cold greens gives this salad its contrast in temperature. The beef is marinated in soy sauce and pear juice, then seared in a very hot pan until the liquid cooks off and the surface turns glossy and caramelized. Cooking it in batches in a well-heated pan keeps water from pooling, so the meat browns instead of stewing. The fat left in the pan is not wasted; it becomes part of the dressing for the vegetables. Minari, a Korean water parsley with a grassy, celery-like aroma, is cut into 5 cm lengths so the stems stay crisp. Because it wilts fast once dressed, it is mixed in only at the last moment, with a generous shower of sesame seeds.
In the five-color namul set for Chuseok and Seollal ancestral tables, bellflower root is the white one. The torn root is rubbed hard with salt to draw out its bitterness and rinsed until the cloudy water runs clear, then dressed with gochujang, vinegar, and sugar. Since it is never cooked, it stays crunchy long enough to be made ahead.
This pot rice is eaten without a dipping sauce; the seasoning, just soup soy sauce and salt, is cooked into the rice. Lift the lid and the chamnamul, a fragrant Korean wild green, hits first, while the rice itself carries the flavor of the oyster and shiitake mushrooms sautéed underneath it.