877 recipes. Page 15 of 37
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Minari, sold in English as water parsley, smells clean and green in a way parsley and celery do not, and the scent does not survive much heat. Past 20 seconds in the pot it leaves with the steam and only the crunch remains, which is why the blanching stops there.
Chunks of cutlassfish (galchi), seasoned for ten minutes with soy sauce and ginger, sit on the very top of the pot as the rice cooks. After resting, the flesh falls apart at the touch of a paddle. The scallions are scattered over and everything is folded together with a light hand.
Chicken gizzards have a springy, chewy bite, and peeling off the silver membrane and any off-smelling bits, then a quick blanch, keeps their flavor clean. They toughen when cooked too long, yet the thickest one still has to reach 74°C at the center, and that reading, not the reduced sauce, decides when to stop.
Daegu's flat mandu hold less than a spoonful of filling each, so wrapper and filling press into one thin sheet. With only glass noodles, garlic chives, and cabbage inside, they taste light until dipped in soy sauce sharpened with vinegar and chili flakes.
Pork skirt comes from the diaphragm. The coarse grain gives a firm chew, and the meat is cut across it. Browning tells you when to turn the pieces, not when they are done; that is decided by the center of the thickest piece reaching 63°C.
Napa cabbage, oyster mushrooms and bok choy alternate around the rim of the pot, with the beef spread flat in the center, and the whole thing cooks at the table. The vegetables release water as they go, and the broth starts out lightly seasoned to allow for it.
There is no chili in this braise, just soy sauce, sugar and garlic, and the juices from the boneless thighs soak into the potato and carrot so nothing else needs seasoning. If the fat feels like too much, trim off some of the chicken skin before cooking.
Larger and thicker than perilla leaves, soybean leaves take longer to absorb the brine but reward you with a hearty chew, and a single leaf wraps a whole spoonful of rice. Give them at least two days in the fridge, until the soy color reaches the middle of each leaf; this is not a same-day banchan. Garlic, cheongyang chili, and onion steep in the brine alongside the leaves, giving the soy flavor a sharp, peppery lift. The usual way to eat it is draped over hot rice.
Two noodles share the wok in this Singapore dish: springy yellow wheat noodles and softer rice noodles. A splash of prawn stock goes in near the end and is cooked down until the noodles have drunk most of it, so the seafood flavor ends up inside the strands rather than in a pool on the plate. Squid and shrimp are seared briefly and set aside first so they do not overcook while the noodles finish.
Golden seared tofu and buttery avocado share a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, and lemon juice. Familiar Korean seasoning paired with citrus acidity keeps the bowl savory without making it heavy. Pressing the tofu until its surface feels dry cuts down on splattering and gives a cleaner sear. Left alone until the first side firms up, the cubes sear well enough to hold their shape when tossed. The avocado is cut only once everything else is ready and goes straight into the lemony dressing, where it browns less. Let the hot tofu cool slightly before it touches the greens.
Uchimame are soybeans softened, flattened with a wooden mallet, and dried, and because they are already thin and split they cook alongside daikon in the same pot. This simmer from eastern Fukui City, also called gonji namasu, was once tied to Hoonko gatherings and ceremonies and is now everyday home food all year.
Miyeokgwi, the ruffled base of the sea mustard plant (sold as mekabu in Japan), is thicker and bumpier than the leaves and bounces back when you bite it. It is dressed sweet, sour, and hot with chili flakes, soy, vinegar, and sugar, then chilled for 10 minutes before serving.
Gondre, a mild wild thistle green from the mountains of Gangwon Province, cooks right on top of the rice, so the rice itself stays plain with a soft, grassy aroma. The seasoning comes at the table: soy sauce mixed with green onion, garlic, chili flakes, and sesame oil brings salt and heat against the gentle greens. Fresh gondre is most fragrant in spring, but properly soaked dried gondre gives nearly the same result year round.
Chicken feet are mostly skin and cartilage, with a sticky, gelatinous chew, and the meat is nibbled off between thin bones. Boiling them first strips the slippery coating so the gochujang and chili flake sauce clings thickly. How hot it gets comes down to the number of cheongyang chilies.
There is no meat in the filling, only king oyster mushroom, tofu and garlic chives. Both the mushroom and the tofu hold a lot of water, so the minced mushroom is dry-fried in a pan without oil first and the tofu is wrung out hard in a cloth.
As halved blue crab grills, the innards in the top shell thicken into a rich paste that serves as a dipping sauce for the meat. That is why the crab is split carefully, without letting them run out. Whatever innards and glaze are left, spooned over rice and mixed in, make a meal on their own.
Bone-in pork ribs simmer quietly with knotted kombu and shiitake for about an hour and a half, until the meat slips off the bone and the broth is still clear. The soup comes from Okinawa's habit of using every part of the pig and remains an important New Year dish. Each bowl also gets a softened kombu knot alongside the ribs.
Glossy braised kelp should have a springy, almost jelly-like bite that snaps cleanly. That spring is decided at the soaking stage: take the kelp out when it bends easily rather than by the clock, because kelp left too long in the water goes soft.
After three months or more in the brine, whole garlic cloves lose their raw bite and turn springy, salty, and sweet. Freshly packed cloves still taste sharp, because this long-keeping pickle, traditionally made with the new garlic of June, is meant to sit for months. The repeated cycle of draining, reboiling, and cooling the brine is what lets the jar keep that long, and the brine always goes in cold, since hot liquid partially cooks the cloves and dulls their texture. Eat them one at a time alongside fatty grilled pork belly or short ribs.
A big platter piled with somyeon, shredded cabbage, cucumber, carrot and torn lettuce arrives tossed in a spicy-tangy gochujang dressing. Each vegetable brings its own kind of crunch against the soft noodles, and the dressing of gochujang, vinegar, sugar and soy hits sweet, sour and hot in quick succession. Sesame oil and toasted seeds round off the sharpness without dulling it.
Peanut butter whisked with soy sauce, lime juice, and chili sauce gives the same rich, nutty profile as the peanut sauce served with satay skewers. That sauce goes over thick pieces of seared tofu with lettuce, carrot, and cucumber, turning a salad into a full meal. Water clinging to the vegetables thins the dressing and dulls it, so shake them dry before assembling.
Small fish and shrimp from Osaka Bay, sun-dried together, go into this sweet-salty bean dish as goyori: the mixed catch left over after the saleable pieces were picked out. Dried soybeans are cooked tender with coarse sugar, sake, mirin, and soy, then reduced with the dry-roasted goyori until no liquid remains and the beans shine. It comes from Osaka's Senshu and Kawachi areas, and in Kawachi it also goes by jako mame.
Drying makes radish sweeter and chewy, and that chew is the reason to use it. The strips get only 20 minutes in cold water; any longer and they turn limp like fresh radish. Rice syrup in the gochujang dressing gives it its shine.
Chicken thigh glazed in gochujang goes over rice, with mayonnaise piped across it in zigzags. Thigh stays moist through the glazing where breast would dry out.