683 recipes. Page 12 of 29
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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.
Salt is the only seasoning. The heat goes off when a strand of potato bends without snapping, which leaves a little crunch in the middle.
Blanching time decides the texture of pork skin, which is almost pure collagen: too short and it stays rubbery, too long and it goes limp. On the grill the skin buckles into ridges that trap the gochujang glaze, concentrating spicy-sweet flavor in every groove.
Buckwheat jelly is plain on its own, and the cold soy and vinegar broth is mixed a little too salty and sour to make up for it once the jelly goes in. The broth is chilled until a few ice crystals remain, and crumbled laver and sesame oil go on just before serving.
The square fish cake sheets (eomuk) are cut into triangles small enough to pick up together with a cube of potato. The fish cake goes in only when the potatoes are half done; any earlier and it turns soggy.
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.
Sliced paper-thin on the bias, about 0.1cm, the cucumber takes on the dressing quickly and turns tender while keeping its crunch. Vinegar brightens the cucumber's cool, watery freshness, and the chili heat follows quietly behind. It shows up constantly on Korean summer tables, on its own with rice or piled onto naengmyeon and bibimbap. It is mixed close to mealtime, since after about 30 minutes the cucumber starts weeping water and goes limp.
How long aralia shoots need in the water depends on their thickness, so the base, not the leaf color, decides when they come out: it should be tender enough to chew. Pull them early to save the aroma and the bases stay hard. The vinegared gochujang sits on the side instead of being mixed in.
Chwinamul (aster greens, a Korean wild herb) is dressed with soup soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic before it goes on top of the rice, so the rice comes out seasoned and needs no sauce on the side. Lift the lid and the first thing you notice is the herb's slightly bitter scent.
This has been a fixture of Korean school lunches and staff cafeterias for decades. The potato is cut into thin, even matchsticks; when the widths vary, the thin strips break while the thick ones stay underdone.
When buying pork neck, look less at any particular fat ratio than at an even thickness and fat spread through the lean. Cut 1 cm thick, it is seasoned with salt and pepper and seared, with garlic browned beside it and lettuce on the side.
Butterbur stems are peeled, blanched and left to soak in cold water for a good while to draw out their acrid edge. Ground perilla seed with a little glutinous rice flour makes the broth thick enough to cling to a spoon, and the thick-cut stems and king oyster mushrooms give it something to chew.
Despite the name, gamja-jjim is not steamed: potato cubes simmer in soy sauce, sugar and garlic until almost no liquid is left and a glossy film coats each piece. Cubes cut to one size take the seasoning to the center at the same pace, and no piece ends up bland inside. Scallions and a little sesame oil finish it with a fresh, nutty note.
Shrimp and squid take over from meat, bringing two textures to the glass noodles: a springy snap from the shrimp and a firmer chew from the squid. Scoring the squid makes it curl in the heat and leaves a pattern on the surface. Patted dry before they meet a very hot pan, the shrimp and squid sear instead of boiling in their own liquid. The moment the shrimp turn pink and the squid curls, they come out of the pan, rejoining the noodles only at the end. Glass noodles soaked thoroughly before boiling take up the seasoning evenly and turn glossy. Korean holiday tables sometimes swap this in for beef japchae.
Squid scored on the inside, blanched briefly, and plunged into ice water stays chewy without turning rubbery. Half-moon cucumber slices add crisp juiciness, and shredded red cabbage brings a purple contrast. The chojang dressing, gochujang (Korean chili paste) thinned with vinegar and maesil-cheong, a green plum syrup, is spicy, sweet, and sour all at once, giving the mild squid a strong accent. Served cold, it makes a light meal on hot summer days when appetite is low.
Eolgali, young napa cabbage cut before the head fills out, has leaves thin enough to need only about a minute in boiling water. It is dressed mildly, with doenjang, garlic, scallion, and sesame oil and no chili, a habit carried over from country tables that turned whatever grew in the garden between kimchi-making seasons into namul.
Rice, onion and carrot simmer in chicken stock, and ground perilla seed stirred in at the end thickens the porridge. The chicken breast is poached on its own and shredded along the grain, then added only once the rice has nearly broken down, just to heat through.
The potatoes here are cubed, not shredded, at about 2 cm. Their corners are browned first; then a gochujang, soy and sugar sauce goes in and cooks down until almost nothing loose is left in the pan. What remains is a red, glossy coat on each cube rather than sauce on the plate.
Thin slices of sirloin are laid on a grill grate with their edges overlapping, so they cook as one wide sheet rather than as loose strips in a pan of juices. Cut 2 to 3 mm thick and kept in a single layer, the beef cooks fast and evenly, and the edges brown on the grate.
This is the dried pollack soup Koreans often make the morning after drinking, with a handful of spring water dropwort (minari) added. Pollack strips toasted in sesame oil give the broth its base, beaten egg drifts through it in soft ribbons, and the grassy minari lightens the whole heavy bowl.
Instead of small whole potatoes, this version peels ordinary ones and cuts them into bite-size chunks. The corn syrup waits until the potatoes are nearly tender; added that late, it stays a thin shine instead of turning into a sticky syrup. Serve it warm or fully cooled.
Ice-chilled ramen noodles topped with neat stripes of egg crepe, ham, cucumber and tomato get a tangy soy-vinegar dressing poured over instead of a broth. Because the sauce is a drizzle, not a soup, each topping keeps its own flavor and color. Cutting the egg, ham and cucumber to the same thin width makes the plate look tidy and lets every bite pick up a bit of everything, and the dressing goes on only at the table so the noodles stay springy.
Blanched squid tossed in gochujang, chili flakes and vinegar works as both a drinking snack and a side dish with rice. Timing decides almost everything: past a minute to a minute and a half in boiling water the flesh contracts and turns rubbery, while undercooked squid stays translucent in the middle. An ice bath right after stops the carryover heat and locks in the springy bite.
Simmered until the liquid is nearly gone, the fish cakes keep a sticky, sweet-salty shine and turn even chewier as they cool. It has been a school lunch and lunchbox side for a long time, usually made in a big batch to last several days.