877 recipes. Page 24 of 37
As an Amazon Associate, we may earn from qualifying purchases.
The octopus is already cooked, so all the pan has to do is reduce the gochujang sauce onto it. Over high heat, it is done the moment the sauce darkens at the edges and turns glossy.
Giving the potatoes a 5-minute head start in plain water lines up their timing with the beltfish, and the starch they release thickens the sauce. Since beltfish breaks apart if handled often, the broth is ladled over rather than the pieces moved, and the reduced sauce is spooned onto rice with the fish.
Cooked and served in a small earthenware pot, nabeyaki udon stays piping hot from the first bite to the last. Chicken thigh simmered right in the dashi, soy, and mirin broth adds fat and body that breast meat would not. The egg poaches in the center under the lid until the white sets and the yolk stays soft, and the shrimp tempura is added after the heat is off so it reaches the table still crisp.
Turned out of its steaming bowl, this Hakka dish lands as neat rows of soy-darkened pork belly sitting on a bed of preserved mustard greens, with the juices poured back over the top. Over an hour of steaming, the salt and fermented tang of the greens works its way into the pork.
Piling bean sprouts high on the soaked rice and cooking them together lets their moisture seep into the grains, while the sprouts turn slightly translucent and still keep a little crunch. The rice itself is unseasoned; a soy sauce dressing with sesame oil, chili flakes, green onion and sesame seeds does all the work when spooned on and mixed in. Some cooks add julienned radish to soften the beany smell of the sprouts.
Mayonnaise stirred in after the heat is off keeps the dried squid strands soft and moist even once the dish cools. The pan comes off the heat as soon as the strands start to clump together, since a sauce cooked any longer scorches and turns bitter.
Coated thinly in gochujang and syrup, small octopus needs only a minute and a half on a grill rack or pan, two minutes at most. Snipped into bites with scissors, it goes into perilla or lettuce wraps or over a bowl of rice.
Hairtail is so soft and oily that stirring it with a ladle breaks it apart. Here the pot itself gets a shake now and then to move the sauce around underneath, and broth is spooned over the fish only in the last few minutes with the lid off.
Blanched spinach, soybean sprouts, and julienned carrot are tossed with thin somyeon in a soy, vinegar, and plum syrup dressing that is salty, tart, and faintly sweet, with no chili paste involved. The spinach and sprouts are blanched separately and squeezed hard, because leftover water thins the sauce and makes the noodles swell and clump as they sit. Dry-sauteing the carrot without oil for a minute brings out a sweetness raw carrot lacks. Dressing the noodles before adding the vegetables seasons every strand instead of letting the sauce cling only to the greens. The garlic is stirred until evenly dispersed so no single bite turns sharp, and half a tablespoon of gochugaru makes a spicy version.
The name means black clothing, and the pork loin arrives exactly that way, coated in a dark, glossy layer of black sesame. Once a dish of the Ryukyu royal court in Okinawa, it is steamed rather than grilled, which lets sesame toasted and ground until oily wrap the lean loin without scorching.
The sauce holds just a teaspoon of gochujang, and what comes through is mostly soy sauce and sesame oil rather than heat. Cucumber, avocado, seaweed salad and chilled cubes of tuna sit in separate sections over brown rice, with the sauce drizzled on right before eating.
The pork belly goes into a dry pan with no oil at all. After three or four minutes it has rendered plenty of fat and browned at the edges, and that fat cooks the onion before a quick coating of gochujang, soy sauce and sugar.
Broad, thin sheets of sirloin cut across the grain give this neobiani a tender bite, and the beef stays in whole slices instead of being minced into patties. Grated onion and sugar in the soy marinade brown fast and scorch before the beef does, so the slices are laid in one layer without the leftover marinade.
In Jeju, galchi-jorim is made with plenty of liquid, close to a stew, and rice gets mixed into whatever sauce is left. Potato goes under the fish along with the radish, another Jeju habit, and its starch gives the sauce some body.
Thin shabu-shabu beef and onion, glazed in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, sit on top of thick udon in clear dashi, giving the bowl a sweet, savory topping over a light broth. The beef is cooked in a separate pan rather than in the soup, which keeps its glossy finish and stops the broth from turning murky. It needs only about 2 minutes once the seasoning is added, at the point where half the red has gone, or it toughens. A little dashi is held back at the start to soften the broth if it tastes too salty. Rinsing the boiled noodles with hot water clears off their surface starch so the soup stays clean. Sliced scallions finish the bowl with a fresh edge.
Five-spice powder, with its cinnamon and star anise, perfumes the soy broth, which sets moo palo apart from a plain soy braise even though both turn the same deep brown. Thai home cooks simmer pork and boiled eggs together for a long time and ladle the braise over warm rice with plenty of broth.
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.
Oily mackerel and boiled gondre, a rustic, grassy Korean thistle green, share one gochujang and soy glaze. The mackerel is pan-browned separately and added near the end, so it is still in large flakes on the plate.
Squid beaks in butter take so little time that another plate can go out in the middle of a drinking session. They are tossed with garlic in butter over high heat for about three minutes, then soy sauce and mirin are cooked down onto them.
The hairtail pieces sit in lightly salted water for five minutes and are then patted completely dry. A dry surface is what lets the chili and soy sauce sink into the fish.
Squid takes the place of beef in this version of japchae, the Korean glass noodle stir-fry, tossed with spinach, carrot, and onion in a soy and sugar sauce. Scoring the inside of the squid in a crosshatch lets the seasoning reach more surface and keeps the cooked pieces tender. The squid gets only about a minute over high heat, since any longer turns it rubbery and leaks water that leaves the noodles soggy. The spinach is blanched separately and squeezed hard for the same reason. Boiled for no more than 6 minutes, the glass noodles stay springy and hold together in the pan.
Etsu fried crisp in potato starch goes straight into a vinegar-soy marinade while still hot, so the fish absorbs it quickly and the thin-cut vegetables stay crunchy. The fish is caught only during a short season from May to July in the Chikugo area of Fukuoka, and its many fine bones call for closely spaced cuts along the body. Served chilled, it is a summer side dish.
Keep the fat that renders from the ground pork, because the onion cooks in it next and needs time to turn deeply golden; rushing that stage leaves the sauce pale. During the low simmer, the sauce is ready for the peeled eggs once it has thickened and the pork looks glossy, and the eggs stay in until their surface turns deep brown. Spoon both meat and sauce over the rice so the liquid soaks into the grains.
Blanched beef intestines (gopchang) go into a dry pan first and give up their own fat, and that fat, not cooking oil, is what the gochujang sauce and vegetables are fried in. The chewy gopchang carries a strong hit of chili from both gochujang and chili flakes.