108 recipes. Page 3 of 5
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Cooked straight in the doenjang broth instead of a separate pot, thin somyeon take on the paste's flavor and lend the soup a little body. The bowl needs to reach the table the moment the heat goes off, before the fine noodles drink up the liquid. Potato, onion, and zucchini supply all the sweetness, making it an easy weeknight soup with a short ingredient list.
There is no boiling of octopus here: it is bought already cooked. Diced as small as the carrot and zucchini, it waits until the rice has fully softened, since a long simmer from the start would make it tough.
Blue crab in its spring or autumn season is halved and simmered in a radish broth with a little doenjang and chili flakes. The shells turn red well before the meat is cooked through. Crack the claws with the back of a knife beforehand and the meat comes out easily at the table.
Wait until the clams are cooked to check the seasoning. As they open they release briny liquid into the broth, and a broth salted to taste with doenjang alone can end up too salty. Throw out any clams that stay shut.
Bittersweet spring aralia shoots sit on top of a doenjang broth thickened by potato and zucchini. The dish belongs to early spring, the short window when the shoots are in season. Pressing the doenjang through a sieve with a ladle keeps lumps out and the broth clean. As the potato simmers it partly breaks down, giving the soup body and a mild sweetness that sits well with the fermented soybean paste, and chewy knife-cut noodles stand up to that density. The shoots are blanched on their own and added near the end, because long simmering dulls the very fragrance the dish is built around.
Naengi (shepherd's purse, a spring green) is spread over doenjang-seasoned rice to steam, and when the lid comes off its earthy spring scent rushes out. The doenjang is first fried in perilla oil with zucchini and onion, so every grain picks up its savory depth.
Garlic and chili flakes, given 30 seconds in sesame oil, turn the broth a deep red, and in it large spoonfuls of soft tofu wobble alongside plump oysters.
A tablespoon of doenjang is stirred into the red chili broth to tame the fishiness. The frozen pollock is thawed only partly, just enough for a knife to get through the bone, and cut while still firm; fully thawed, the flesh crumbles.
Grated raw potato, squeezed and bound with its own settled starch, becomes ongsimi: small Gangwon-style dumplings that turn translucent and chewy outside while staying soft and floury within. Sharing a light anchovy-kelp broth with knife-cut wheat noodles, they make each spoonful alternate between two very different bites.
The shrimp are split into two uses. Heads and shells simmer into the stock the rice cooks in, while the meat is minced, given a quick turn in sesame oil with garlic, and set aside until the grains have fully broken down.
Cut into 0.7 cm half-moons and cooked only briefly, the zucchini keeps its shape in the clear broth and a little firmness at the center. The shrimp, added first, flavor the broth; dried shrimp make it deeper.
The tough, bark-like base of each dureup (aralia shoot) is trimmed off, and thick stems are split lengthwise or scored with a cross at the bottom. That way three or four minutes in the pot cooks them through while they stay crisp. Gochujang goes in at a third of the amount of doenjang, just enough for a low heat.
Squid and shrimp take the place of pork, so the familiar black bean sauce picks up a briny note as the seafood releases its juices into it. Potato, onion and zucchini soften into the sauce for sweetness and body, and a little starch slurry gives it the glossy, clinging texture that coats the noodles.
Browned ground beef gives this fried rice its savory base, with onion, carrot and zucchini diced just a little larger than the rice so they keep some bite. The beef is left alone in a hot pan before breaking it up, and the browned bits stuck to the bottom carry much of the flavor.
Doenjang, not gochujang, seasons this crab stew, so it tastes nutty and savory before it tastes hot, with the chili flakes and Cheongyang pepper staying in the background.
As the clams open they release their briny liquor into the rice-water doenjang broth, and the zucchini stew tastes cleaner and brighter for it. Give the clams about an hour to purge their sand.
Manila clams opening in the pot release a briny liquor that does most of the seasoning work in this knife-cut noodle soup. Kelp pulled out before the water boils leaves a clean mineral base, and the wide wheat noodles shed a little starch as they cook, giving the broth a soft natural body. Shrimp and squid go in only briefly so they stay tender, and zucchini and scallion add a fresh, mildly sweet finish.
Apple snails, diced zucchini, onion, and crumbled tofu are simmered with doenjang and gochujang into a chunky paste, then folded with warm rice into lettuce and perilla leaves. Unlike ureong doenjang jjigae, a soupy stew with the same snails, this version is reduced until a spoonful holds its shape for about five seconds and nothing drips from the leaf.
Blue crabs in spring are packed with meat and taste noticeably sweet. Here they are halved and simmered in their shells with chili flakes and Cheongyang peppers, and the closer to live the crabs are when they go in, the more of that sweetness comes through.
No doenjang or gochujang here; salted shrimp does the seasoning. Its saltiness varies by jar, which is why only one tablespoon goes in at first and the remaining half is added at the end to taste. The base is rice-rinsing water with potato boiled in it for eight minutes, and chili flakes and cheongyang pepper turn it red and sharp.
The name comes from the custom of serving noodles to guests at weddings, birthdays and first-birthday parties. Anchovy and kelp make the broth, and seasoning it with soup soy sauce alone keeps it transparent rather than cloudy. The toppings sit in separate colors: zucchini, carrot, yellow and white egg strips, and crumbled seaweed. Kelp comes out of the pot first, since left too long it turns the broth bitter.
Carrot gets a one-minute head start before the onion, zucchini, bell pepper and corn follow. The order goes by how long each vegetable takes to cook, not by how much water it holds. Everything is cut to about 5 mm so it spreads evenly through the rice, and the corn kernels give little bursts of sweetness.
Cod and pollock are soft-fleshed fish, so once the pieces are in the pot they are never turned; the spicy broth is just spooned over them. That is how the pieces stay whole all the way to the table. Swap in clams or shrimp and it becomes a seafood maeuntang.
The broth is reduced until there is just enough to mix into rice or spoon onto a lettuce wrap. With so little liquid, it is hard to fix once it turns salty, which is why only 80 percent of the doenjang goes in at first and the rest is used to adjust at the end. While the pastes fry for 30 seconds, keep the heat low and keep stirring.