877 recipes. Page 34 of 37
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Fresh okara soaks up a dashi simmered with carrot, burdock and shiitake until it is moist yet crumbles apart under a spatula. Once the okara goes in, it needs constant turning from the bottom of the pot or it sticks. The dish is done before it dries out: no loose liquid, but still damp enough to clump and fall apart again.
With only half a tablespoon of gochujang against soy sauce and oyster sauce, this braise leans salty and savory rather than red and fiery. That small spoonful of chili paste has to dissolve fully into the soy and oyster sauce, or the pork and scapes end up unevenly seasoned. Lean pork tenderloin, sliced across the grain about 1 cm thick, stays tender through a short simmer while its juices enrich the sauce. Adding the garlic scapes only after the liquid has dropped by half lets them soak up that sauce and still keep their crunch and mild, sharp bite. Left too long they turn stringy, which is why the pan comes off the heat with a spoonful of glossy sauce left for the rice.
Salted rice balls grill over medium-low heat, each side left alone for a good while, with a thin coat of soy and mirin glaze brushed on at every turn. The outside becomes a thin, crisp shell, and only the edges where the glaze gathers turn a little chewy. A strip of nori goes around the base, with miso soup and pickled radish alongside.
Jumulleok means meat kneaded by hand with its marinade, but thin duck slices tear if squeezed, so here the gochujang sauce is folded through them gently. Perilla leaves add their scent to the spicy coating.
Kelp flavors the soy broth only briefly and comes out before the eggs go in, since a long simmer turns it heavy and muddy. Whole garlic cloves braise alongside the quail eggs until soft and mellow, while a single Cheongyang chili joins in the final minutes to add a sharp edge without making the dish fiery. The eggs come out mahogany outside and seasoned toward the yolk, easy one-bite pieces for a lunchbox.
Chicken thigh and green onion are threaded onto skewers and cooked in a skillet, then brushed again and again with a thin coat of tare, a sweet glaze of soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Thigh meat has enough fat to stay juicy through that repeated searing. Laid over hot rice, the glaze runs down between the grains and no extra sauce is needed.
Osam takes its name from the first syllables of squid (ojingeo) and pork belly (samgyeopsal). The pork belly is cooked first until plenty of fat has rendered, and the squid and gochujang sauce go into that fat, so no extra oil is needed.
Butterbur stems are sharply bitter, so they are peeled, blanched and then soaked in cold water for a full hour; after that only a pleasant, faint bitterness remains. Braised slowly in kelp stock with soy sauce and a little syrup, the stems absorb the seasoning all the way through and come out salty-sweet with a glossy surface. Sliced red chili at the end adds more color than heat.
Only honey sweetens this yaksik and no caramel goes in, so it stays lighter than the deep brown versions, with each glutinous rice grain still visible around the jujubes and chestnuts. Cinnamon and sesame oil carry the aroma, and soy sauce leaves a savory note between the sweet bites. The rice is steamed plain until no hard core remains, seasoned in a bowl, then steamed again, so set aside most of a day counting the 5-hour soak.
Ground pork hits a wok heated to the edge of smoking, and the Thai basil is added only seconds before the heat is cut, just long enough to wilt. Five chilies and five garlic cloves, pounded rather than finely minced, make this hot and garlicky, and it is eaten over rice with a fried egg on top.
The croaker keeps its white flesh and mild flavor instead of tasting of soy because the soy sauce stays out of the pot until the radish is tender and only then gets stirred into the broth and spooned over the fish. Thick slices of Korean radish line the bottom, shielding the fish from direct heat and sweetening the liquid as they soften. Rice wine and thinly sliced ginger handle any fishiness, which is why the seasoning can stay this light. The green onion cooks for just 1 minute at the end to keep its aroma. Croaker has fine-grained, delicate flesh, and a gentle steam-braise rather than a hard boil keeps the pieces whole for a shared table of four.
Raw salmon and avocado alternate over warm rice, dressed with soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil: half the sauce coats the salmon for a short rest in the fridge, and the rest is drizzled over the rice. Buy salmon sold for raw eating and kept refrigerated. Smell and appearance alone do not tell you it is safe raw. Keep it chilled until you cut it, and use a clean knife and board. Neither the warm rice nor the soy sauce cooks the fish, and the unheated mirin keeps its alcohol. The bowl is best eaten right away, before a long marinade toughens the flesh and the warm rice changes its texture.
Chicken in a thin starch coat gets its gloss from a soy, vinegar and sugar sauce. The pineapple goes in just before the sauce and needs only a minute, until its edges look faintly translucent. Canned pineapple works too, drained lightly first.
With nothing more than radish, soy sauce, sugar, and garlic, everything depends on cooking the thick 2 cm rounds through to the center. Covered first, then uncovered to reduce, the radish turns translucent at the edges and picks up the soy while its own sweetness rounds out the salt. A single green chili and a little sesame oil at the very end add a light kick and a nutty smell to an otherwise plain, everyday side.
A whole salmon fillet cooks right on top of the soaked rice, and only after resting is it broken into big flakes and folded through. The finish is soy sauce, a knob of butter, and lemon juice, which makes the rice rich and savory with a bright edge. Thick fillets can still be underdone at the center when the rice is ready. A thermometer reading of 63°C at the thickest point is the signal to stop.
Pork loin and green pepper are cut into matching thin strips so they cook together in a few minutes over high heat. Slicing the loin across the grain means even the long strips bite cleanly instead of turning chewy and stringy.
Blanched radish greens, the leafy tops of Korean radish, soak up the pear-and-soy braising liquid from the beef and bring an earthy flavor with a slight chew. Short rib meat is soaked in cold water first to draw out blood, which keeps the sauce clean-tasting rather than murky. Pear juice adds a gentle fruit sweetness under the garlic and ginger, and the reduced sauce clings to both meat and greens, ready to spoon over rice.
The rice itself stays unseasoned, and a simple soy and sesame oil sauce comes on the side, mixed into each bowl a little at a time to keep it from getting too salty. Thin lotus root slices steam on top of the rice instead of being stirred in. They stay whole, turn translucent at the edges, and keep a light crunch.
A generous amount of finely shredded ginger gives mild chicken breast a sharp, warming smell. The cabbage and bell pepper are not cooked for long, so they still crunch.
Sour, long-fermented kimchi and pork back ribs braise down together in one pot, so the first impression is tangy and savory before it is spicy. The riper the kimchi, the stronger its sourness and savory depth, which makes the state of the kimchi the biggest factor in how the dish turns out.
Two bamboo leaves are folded into a cone, filled with glutinous rice, pork belly marinated in soy and oyster sauce, and shiitake, then tied into a triangle and simmered for over two hours. In that time the rice soaks up the pork fat and soy and packs into one dense, sticky mass.
Garlic cooked in butter, then soy sauce and sugar bubbling down, leave the shrimp with a sweet-salty shine. Shrimp shrink and toughen soon after they are cooked through, and the soy and sugar are mixed ahead to go in the moment the shrimp are done.
Unlike the spicy, raw-dressed dried radish salad, this version braises rehydrated radish strips with thin slices of lean beef eye of round in a soy broth until chewy and lightly sweet. Drying concentrates the radish's sugar, and the strips drink up the braising liquid as they simmer. Soaking them in cold water for at least 20 minutes, until they spring back, sets up the right final texture.
In Japan, zosui is what happens to the broth left at the end of a hot pot, with rice simmered in it. Here it is made from scratch with dashi. Rinsing the rice once keeps the broth clear, and it is much looser than Korean juk, eaten as rice and broth together.