81 recipes. Page 3 of 4
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Mala xiangguo takes the numbing, spicy flavors of Sichuan hot pot and puts them into a dry stir-fry: beef, lotus root, shiitake, and bok choy get only a thin coat of mala sauce, with no broth at all. Everything is patted or shaken dry first: with nothing simmering, any water left on the ingredients just pools in the pan.
Napa cabbage lines the bottom of a wide hot pot, and tofu, shiitake and marinated beef are laid in a ring around the edge, giving the pot its finished look before it ever heats. The kelp broth, seasoned with soup soy sauce and no chili, stays clear, and the pot is served bubbling for everyone to ladle from.
Thick-sliced shiitake simmer in anchovy-kelp stock with doenjang, layering the mushroom aroma over the paste's mellow, fermented depth before the broth is poured over plump udon. Onion adds quiet sweetness that keeps the salt in check, and a pinch of gochugaru leaves a faint warmth at the finish. Compared with a Japanese dashi-based udon broth, this one is earthier and heavier, closer to a hearty Korean stew.
Cleaned blue crab sits on the rice, which cooks in anchovy-kelp stock with doenjang dissolved in it, and the crab's sweetness and the earthy paste soak down into every grain. After the rice has rested, one more minute over low heat builds a layer of nurungji (scorched rice) on the bottom. Doenjang varies in saltiness from brand to brand, so start with a tablespoon and taste the stock.
Once the pan is hot, the heat stays high until the end. Pork goes in first, then shrimp and squid, then the vegetables, roughly a minute apart, with no gap for chopping or drying anything, which is why everything is prepped and lined up beside the stove. There is no starch at the finish: oyster sauce and water boil for 2 minutes and leave only a thin coat.
Fish cakes of assorted shapes simmer with shiitake in a kelp and radish broth and come to the table in the pot, seasoned lightly with soup soy sauce so their own flavor stays in front.
Wide flour noodles from Yamanashi simmer straight in miso broth with kabocha, potato, daikon, and napa cabbage, leaving the soup thick and slow to cool. In mountain areas poorly suited to rice, houtou long served as a staple, and its lasting warmth means it is eaten most often in winter. Unlike udon, the dough has no salt and the floured strips are never boiled on their own, which leaves their starch to thicken the pot.
Young soybean leaves have a fresh, grassy aroma that sits well against gangdoenjang, a thick, salty soybean paste here cooked down with shiitake, onion, and garlic until it barely moves. That thickness is the point: a runny paste loosens the rice and leaks out of the leaf. The amount of rice is matched to each leaf, since they vary in size, and the parcels are set seam side down so they hold until serving.
Carrot, onion, bell pepper and shiitake go in one after another, firmest first, and all of them finish crisp, with a single tablespoon of oyster sauce added only in the last 20 seconds for gloss.
The heat in this soup comes from white pepper rather than chili, building slowly at the back of the throat after each spoonful. Vinegar layers sourness on top, and the broth, thickened with starch only until it turns glossy and translucent, holds wood ear mushrooms, tofu and thin ribbons of egg.
Tofu, shiitake and thick udon all cook in one pot of kimchi broth that goes to the table as is, nabe style. Frying the sour kimchi in sesame oil first takes off its raw sharpness and leaves the anchovy-kelp broth spicy yet rounded. Tofu pressed dry with a paper towel keeps the broth from clouding, and it simmers while broth is spooned over it, since stirring hard breaks it apart. Only half the soup soy sauce is added early because kimchi varies in saltiness, and the rest is added bit by bit once the noodles are in. Once the udon has soaked up the soup it is ready, and any broth left in the pot can take a scoop of rice to finish.
Chicken thigh and shiitake are marinated in soy and oyster sauce, stir-fried, and wrapped in dried lotus leaves with sticky rice that has already been steamed halfway, then steamed again. Nobody moves it to a plate: the leaf is opened and the rice eaten straight off it, and the moment it opens, a rush of lotus-scented steam comes up. Cantonese dim sum restaurants bring it out in a bamboo steamer.
Shrimp, squid, bamboo shoots, shiitake and bok choy are bound in a clear, glossy sauce made with chicken stock, oyster sauce and starch. The seafood's first sear stops as soon as the surface turns opaque, because it keeps cooking once the stock is poured in.
Salmon fillet with skin and bony parts, milt, and loosened roe all go into one pot of kelp stock seasoned with miso in this Hokkaido-style nabe. It is said to come from fishermen near the mouth of the Ishikari River, who dropped fresh salmon pieces and bones straight into miso soup to celebrate a big catch. Root vegetables, konnyaku, tofu, and rolls of blanched spinach wrapped in napa cabbage are arranged in sections around a mound of miso in the center. A final dusting of sansho pepper over the whole pot adds a tingling lift to the miso broth.
Pork, shrimp, squid, and clams are stir-fried hard with cabbage and bean sprouts, then simmered with thick champon noodles in a chicken-based broth seasoned with oyster sauce and sake. There is no chili; the flavor comes from the seared seafood and the sweetness of the vegetables. Kamaboko fish cake and shiitake round out a bowl that is mostly toppings. Serve as soon as the noodles have soaked up the broth and the cabbage still has some bite.
Pyongyang once ate this chicken and rice soup for breakfast. With no doenjang or gochujang and salt as the only seasoning, any cloudiness in the broth shows up in the taste. The chicken, scallion and garlic are kept at a bare simmer for 45 minutes. Rice goes into the bowl first, then the broth with its shiitake, and the shredded chicken on top.
Because this soup goes on the table for ancestral memorial rites, even the way it is cut matters. Brisket, radish and tofu are sliced into neat squares of the same thickness, and the fat that rises is skimmed off to keep the broth clear.
In Gunma homes, wide unsalted noodles go straight into a pot of root vegetables and dashi without being boiled first. The broth comes out slightly cloudy and thick rather than clear, and that is how it should be. Taro, burdock, daikon, shiitake, and fried tofu make it a hearty one-pot meal seasoned with both soy sauce and miso. Noodle thickness and vegetables change from one household to another.
With 180 g of king oyster and shiitake mushrooms to 200 g of beef, there is nearly as much mushroom as meat in every bite. The mushrooms are wiped clean rather than washed, added to beef already browned in butter, and stir-fried hard until they wilt before soy sauce goes in around the edge of the pan.
There is no chili flake or gochujang anywhere in this pot. Big dumplings cook in a clear anchovy and kelp stock flavored by shiitake, oyster mushrooms and napa cabbage, and any seasoning still needed at the end comes from salt alone so the broth stays pale. Some people finish the leftover broth with a scoop of rice.
Without any meat, japchae leans entirely on its vegetables: spinach, carrot, shiitake, bell pepper, and onion each keep their own color and sweetness because they are stir-fried one at a time. The spinach only needs to wilt over high heat and is spread out to cool at once, or it dulls in color and turns tough. The glass noodles soak up soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil before anything else joins them and come out glossy, chewy, and seasoned through. Tossing them with vegetables straight from a hot pan makes the noodles slump and clump, the usual way this dish goes wrong. It works as an everyday side dish or on a holiday table.
Shiitake, carrot and burdock, cut into thin matching strips, are spread over the rice and cooked in dashi seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. They stay on top until the rice is done. Heavy vegetables mixed down into the grains keep the liquid from circulating and leave underdone patches.
The water used to soak the dried neungi mushrooms is not poured away; it becomes part of the hot pot broth. So much of the aroma has already moved into that water that the broth smells deeply of mushroom without any meat at all.
The soaked hijiki is rinsed twice in cold water to cut its saltiness and any off smell, then sauteed in sesame oil with shiitake and carrot before the rice goes in. As the pot cooks, the deep sea flavor of the hijiki gets into the rice, and shrimp seasoned with soup soy sauce and garlic sit on top. For a crust on the bottom, turn the heat up a little for the last minute.