240 recipes. Page 9 of 10
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The dried shrimp go into a dry pan for about a minute first to drive off leftover moisture. The soy sauce and oligosaccharide syrup glaze gets 30 seconds after it first bubbles, and then the heat goes off; any longer and it sets hard. Cooled and sealed, it keeps for a few days at room temperature.
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.
Seaweed stems are thick and springy and crunch audibly when you bite them. Salted stems vary a lot by brand, so after soaking, taste one strand and rinse again in fresh water if it is still too salty.
Yuzu syrup, sweet and fragrant with citrus peel, coats chewy-crisp lotus root and makes a bright side for rich main dishes. Thickness decides the texture: even 3 mm rounds stay pleasantly chewy after blanching, while slices cut too thin lose their crunch. A quick rinse in cold water right after blanching stops the cooking while the cut faces are just turning translucent. The rinsed slices are then spread out to drain so leftover water does not dilute the dressing. A rest of about 5 minutes and one more toss let the dressing reach the hollow channels. If the yuzu syrup tastes too sweet, a drop more vinegar brings it back into balance, and the dish is chilled before serving.
Lightly toasted gim is torn into big pieces and tossed with a soy and sesame oil dressing and thinly sliced scallion. Big pieces matter, because some of the edges stay crisp even after the dressing goes on. The seaweed drinks up liquid within minutes, and only what will be eaten right away gets mixed.
Perilla oil is the only source of aroma. Shiitake, carrot, the rice and the lotus root are all sautéed in it before cooking, so the grains come out glossy, with thin slices of lotus root staying crisp throughout.
Pork shoulder is browned until its fat runs, then seaweed stems join it for a quick toss. The roasted taste of the pork mixes with a smell of the sea, and the stems keep their snap.
Leaves picked from pepper plants after the chili harvest make this namul, and they are at their most tender in August and September. They keep a slightly bitter, green aroma even after blanching, and the chili flakes are kept to an amount whose heat does not bury it. The thin leaves take the seasoning almost at once and go to the table as soon as they are mixed.
Small enough to eat by hand in one bite, these pouches turn up in lunchboxes, at picnics and as snacks. Inside the sweet-savory braised fried tofu, the vinegared rice is mixed with finely chopped carrot, cucumber and sesame seeds, so there is a little crunch under the soft tofu. Imitation crab or burdock root can go into the filling as well.
Stir-fried in perilla oil, julienned radish loses its raw, peppery sharpness and turns gently sweet. It is one of the basic namul, used for bibimbap and set out on Korean ancestral-rite tables.
Bibimbap rarely goes without it and ancestral rite tables almost always include it, so bracken namul tends to be made in large holiday batches and eaten over several days. Records of eating it go back to the Three Kingdoms period, and the traditional cooking fat is perilla oil, not sesame. It tastes fine straight from the fridge.
Tiny dried anchovies end up glossy, sweet-salty, and crisp once the glaze sets as they cool. After they go back into the bubbling syrup, 30 seconds to a minute of tossing is all they need; chasing every last bit of sauce on the bottom only makes the coating hard and clumpy.
Cooked with doenjang instead of soy sauce, bracken picks up a deeper fermented smell and a heavier taste that stands up to its bitterness. The paste is loosened in water before it goes in, which keeps it from catching on the bottom of the pan as it simmers.
With no gochujang, only soy sauce and starch syrup for the glaze, these anchovies are sweet-salty with no heat at all, which is why they turn up so often in children's lunchboxes. Turn the heat down as soon as the syrup bubbles once, or the glaze sets hard as it cools. Once cool, the anchovies cling together loosely, just right for picking up a small clump at a time.
A mixed seaweed pack usually holds several kinds, such as sea mustard stems, hijiki, and ogonori, and each one chews a little differently. The seaweed spends only 20 seconds in boiling water to keep that springy bite. A vinegared gochujang dressing and thin slices of cucumber add tang and crunch.
Medium anchovies are bigger and thicker than the tiny ones used in the sweet version, and their heads and dark guts, which would make the dish bitter, come off one by one. Gochujang brings a fermented heat, chili flakes deepen the red, and the amount of flakes is the dial for spiciness.
A tablespoon of mayonnaise goes into the gochujang dressing. Its oil coats the dry squid strips, letting the dressing cling softly and making the squid less tough to chew. The finished dish is nearly dry, and in a lunchbox the sauce stays put instead of creeping into the next compartment.
Myeongyeopchae, pollock floss, is finer and softer than ordinary dried pollock strips, and once stir-fried it sits between the two familiar dried-fish sides: softer than seasoned dried pollock, milder than the shredded squid stir-fry. Its cottony clumps are teased apart along the grain by hand before cooking. A spoonful of mayonnaise in the sauce rounds off the gochujang.
Each braised perilla leaf is peeled off the stack and wrapped around a bite of rice. The leaves are stacked five or six at a time with sauce spooned between the layers and braised gently, so every leaf, wilted and soft, is seasoned evenly.
The seasoning is just a teaspoon each of chili flakes, soy sauce and sugar, and the fish cake's own savory saltiness comes through first. A quick dip in boiling water to rinse off surface oil helps that small amount of seasoning soak in rather than slide off.
Young perilla shoots have tender stems and an even stronger herbal scent than the mature leaves. The 40-second blanch is short on purpose to protect that aroma, and a doenjang dressing with perilla oil, pressed from the same plant's seeds, layers the scent instead of covering it.
How much liquid ends up in the pan depends on how dry the washed spinach is before it goes in. The only seasoning is a teaspoon of soy sauce, with sesame oil and sesame seeds stirred in after the heat is off.
Shishito peppers are blanched for just 40 seconds and tossed in a doenjang dressing. Unlike the braised shishito dish, where the peppers simmer in sauce, these stay crisp and bright green. Now and then one turns out to be hot.
Ketchup sets a sweet base and half a spoon of gochujang adds only a mild heat, giving these cocktail sausages a sticky glaze that settles into shallow scores and sits well in a lunchbox. Once the ketchup and syrup start to thicken they stick fast to the pan, so nothing stays still after the sauce is poured in.