323 recipes. Page 12 of 14
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Store-bought frozen dumplings go straight into boiling anchovy stock without thawing, and in about five minutes they float. Many Korean families make this instead of tteokguk at Lunar New Year, and adding rice cakes turns it into tteok-manduguk.
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.
Mideodeok, a small sea squirt, holds a pocket of briny liquid inside its tough skin, and it bursts in your mouth when you bite down. To keep that liquid in, the stems are left uncut and the sea squirts get only three minutes in the pot, and the doenjang is dissolved in rice-rinsing water rather than anchovy stock. Around Tongyeong and Geoje on Korea's south coast, it is everyday home cooking.
Tofu and water dropwort (minari) are nearly all there is in the bowl, so the anchovy broth stays clear and light. The minari is pulled off the heat while its stems are still crisp and bright, and the soup goes straight into bowls.
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.
Brisket simmered for about 25 minutes gives a clear, light brown broth. The cooked beef can be torn along the grain and returned to the soup, or lifted out and dipped in a seasoned soy sauce.
No meat and no stock, just plain water. Seaweed fried in sesame oil and doenjang (Korean soybean paste) give the broth its flavor, and tofu takes the place the beef would usually hold. It is lighter than beef seaweed soup, and the doenjang leaves the broth slightly thick.
In Korea this soup is served on birthdays and to new mothers, and on a birthday it also carries thanks to the mother who gave birth. Beef and soaked sea mustard are fried in sesame oil one after the other, then simmered in water for more than 20 minutes, until the seaweed is soft enough to lift easily with a spoon.
The only heat involved is a 20-second dip for the seaweed, which is rinsed in cold water right after so it stops cooking. The broth is never heated either; it is soup soy sauce, vinegar and sugar topped up with cold water.
In Jeju, pork backbone and belly simmer for an hour and a half, and gulfweed goes into that broth along with buckwheat flour to thicken it. It keeps thickening as it cools, and the heat goes off while it still runs slowly off a spoon.
Radish greens dried in autumn used to come out through the winter for soups like this one. Rubbed with doenjang first and then simmered with five spoonfuls of perilla seed powder, they end up in a broth thick enough to spoon over rice and mix in.
There is no separate stock here. Seven hundred grams of mussels open in boiling water and their liquor becomes the broth, with doenjang seeping out of the radish greens that were rubbed with it beforehand. Between bites of plump mussel, the greens stay a little fibrous.
Add beef and this becomes beef radish soup; add dried pollack and it becomes pollack radish soup. This is the plain version underneath both, and the one thing that takes care is cutting the radish a little thicker than usual so it does not fall apart in the long simmer. Winter radish makes a noticeably sweeter broth, and the radish is softer still when the soup is reheated the next day.
Most of the work in this spicy beef offal soup happens before cooking: the mixed tripe is scrubbed with salt and flour into every fold, then soaked in cold water to draw out blood and odor. After a quick blanch the first water is thrown out, and a 50-minute simmer in fresh water softens the thick pieces while building the stock.
Clams and shepherd's purse both tend to carry grit. Purge the clams well in salted water and rub the dirt from between the naengi roots by hand, or the clear broth ends up with sand in every spoonful.
Dried pollack, a winter pantry staple, meets the first shepherd's purse dug up in spring. The pollack strips are not soaked, only rinsed of dust and toasted in sesame oil, because a long soak would leave their savoriness behind in the water.
The roots of shepherd's purse carry an earthy, mineral smell and the leaves a mild bitterness. Cutting both and mixing them evenly before cooking spreads each flavor through the pot. Pressing the doenjang through a sieve keeps the anchovy stock clear while still giving it fermented depth.
There is a spoonful of doenjang, but only as a base seasoning, and this tastes more like a clear beef soup made with brisket browned in sesame oil than a doenjang soup. Spring shepherd's purse brings an earthy green scent into the meaty broth.
Not every gomtang is milky. This Naju gomtang uses no bones, only lean brisket and shank simmered over low heat for more than two hours, which keeps the broth clear; turn up the heat and it clouds quickly. The cooked beef is shredded or thinly sliced and reheated in the broth before serving.
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 neungi mushrooms join the pot only for the final 15 minutes, after the chicken has spent 50 minutes making its stock. Boiled from the start, they would lose their aroma and leave something close to an ordinary chicken soup.
On a hot day this takes the soup's place on the Korean table. Thin cucumber slices sit in a sharp broth where vinegar leads, and ice goes in right before serving so it arrives very cold.
The radish simmers alone for more than 8 minutes to sweeten the broth, and the squid goes in afterwards for only 4 to 5. The rings are right when they turn opaque and begin to curl; any longer and they toughen fast. No chili flakes go in.
Eight tablespoons of ground perilla seed turn this duck broth milky and thick, provided they are stirred in after the duck is fully cooked; added too early, the powder turns gritty with a bitter finish. Plain raw duck slices, not smoked or marinated, keep the broth tasting only of duck and radish.