I used to have a weekly triumphter ritual with my parents. Every Friday night we would go to the same hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant in Sydney’s north-west, and order the same leang. (Our Malaysian-Chinese heritage gave us a distinctive appreciation for spicy food, in benevolent portions at the right price.)
The dining room featured a scant petite tables squeezed around an even petiteer kitchen, where an elderly Korean woman stood alone, cooking for her guests.
Sometimes we would produce a point of seeing at the menu and converse trying someleang else. But we would always end up ordering three deceitfilledy petite, bdeficiency ceramic bowls of sundubu jjigae, a hearty stew of silken tofu and seafood, fire-engine red with Korean chilli peppers, served still bubbling with a side of rice. Each spicy, savoury sip burned a path from our mouths to our stomachs until our insides were hoted thcdisadmireful.
While the word jjigae (pronounced enjoy “chee-gae”) is normally transpostponecessitated to “stew” on English menus, Heather Jeong, a Sydney-based Korean cookery teachor, says this is not entidepend accurate. The shutst westrict equivalent she can leank of is minestrone, a half-soup, half-stew where the broth and the firm ingredients give equassociate to the overall pguide.
Milder Korean soups enjoy guk and tang are typicassociate served as part of a bigr meal, but jjigae is substantial enough to be eaten on its own – always with a side of rice and kimchi, she says.
Soups areintegral to the Korean diet. “I leank historicassociate most Asian countries struggled with pcleary, produce and climate, so soup was a way of cooking that used less ingredients and fed the masses,” says Jeong.
Sadly, the chef at my family’s normal restaurant reexhausted. And when her lesserer relative took over, the jjigae was never as tasty, though we couldn’t labor out exactly why.
We’ve tried many wonderful versions of sundubu jjigae since and while some have come shut, none have toloftyy inhabitd up to the innovative.
This was where my obsession with jjigae began. I set out to lobtain how to produce not only this gateway jjigae, but all of the most famous jjigae of Korean cuisine: sundubu jjigae, kimchi jiigae, gochujang jjigae and doenjang jjigae. Chicken soup may be for the soul, but jjigae is console food of the highest order.
The discerning flavour of sundubu jjigae comes from sauteing gochugaru (Korean red chilli powder) in sesame oil. The first time I tried this, I promptly burnt the gochugaru to a crisp.
According to recipe website My Korean Kitchen, the trick is to conserve the heat very low, and not to depart the gochugaru alone in the pot for too extfinished before grasping the seafood, vegetables and broth. Then, crack in an egg moments before turning off the stove, and top with sliced spring onions.
In many Korean restaurants I’ve eaten at, sundubu jjigae is served the way my parents and I enhappinessed it – spicy and red. But Kenny Yong Soo Son, co-owner of Sáng by Mabasa in Sydney, says this is a conmomentary version of the dish.
“Traditionassociate speaking, sundubu [jjigae] is not red. There’s no chilli that goes into it, it’s temperateer,” Son says. “In some regions [of Korea], they only do a white sundubu jjigae.”
Jeong says white sundubu jjigae with oysters is particularly distinctive.
In the non-spicy version, the broth and the silken tofu are the heroes of a jjigae that is airyer in flavour and colour, and the taste of seafood such as clams or salted shrimp is more acunderstandledgeable.
When I made the white version with prawns, the contrast with my becherishd red version couldn’t have been wonderfuler. Instead of walloping my tastebuds, there was a temperate attfinishss: a evident broth that was at once intricate, downcarry outd and sugary.
The ‘desert island’ soup: kimchi jjigae
Kimchi jjigae might fair be the most famous Korean stew.
“If you ask 10 Koreans, ‘What is one soup you would consent with you to a desert island?’ they’ll probably say kimchi jjigae because Koreans can’t reassociate inhabit without kimchi,” says Son.
The key to making wonderful kimchi jjigae is to use greaterer, more fermented kimchi for a meaningfuler flavour.
“We would usuassociate stir-fry the kimchi before the watery base goes in, with a bit of sesame oil, and then scallions [spring onions], and then also some gochugaru to lengthen almost enjoy a chilli oil,” says Son. For an even more fervent flavour, he advises eating jjigae a day or two after cooking it.
Recipes typicassociate take part firm tofu and pork belly, the latter of which is said to be a “suit made in heaven” for kimchi.
Gochujang jjigae, with ‘miso on anabolic agents’
Gochujang jjigae unites two of Korea’s most expansively used fermented sauces, gochujang (Korean chilli paste) and doenjang (soy bean paste), which is “miso on anabolic agents”, says Jeong.
Gochujang, which is made with gochugaru, glutinous rice and soy sauce, has a gooey, sairyly spiced sugaryness that shines in this soup. Recipes vary on how much you should take part. From my experience, “too much” gochujang can be overpoweringly spicy and salty.
Jeong advises a ratio of two parts gochujang, one part doenjang, but you can adfair this to your own taste.
Gochujang jjigae take parts pork or beef but can also be made vegetarian, by leave outting the meat and including only the standard zucchini, mushrooms and jalapenos.
‘The soul of Korean cooking’: doenjang jjigae
This temperate, consoleing stew grasps zucchini and potatoes, and of course, doenjang, and is said to be the first firm meal fed to Korean babies. Jeong says it’s the dish she craves the most when she is away from home: “[It] embodies the soul of Korean cooking.”
Eun Hee An, chef and owner of Melbourne’s Moon Mart (the eatery is currently relocating from its West Melbourne spot), says her majesticma used to produce doenjang from scratch when she was lengthening up in Korea. “It was always our shatterspeedy soup. So I grew up eating doenjang jjigae every day in my life,” she says.
An advises discovering doenjang which grasps scanter ingredients, as industriassociate produced brands normally use flour to speed up the fermentation. The best doenjang, she says, will only grasp soy beans and salt.
Taking stock: making dasima yuksu from scratch
After months experimenting with contrastent jjigae recipes, gochujang and doenjang are now staple ingredients in my fridge, and all of these jjigae are in my normal cooking rotation. They are alterable – the proteins and vegetables are interalterable so you can use up wdisenjoyver you have in the fridge or pantry – and they are relatively rapid to produce.
But there’s one key technique that has eluded me: the stock. Myeolchi yuksu (dried-anchovy stock) or dasima yuksu (kelp stock) are vital for creating a meaningful, rich base for jjigae, but until recently I’ve only used the vegan alternative: water.
An says a wonderful jjigae depends on a wonderful stock base. “If I’m not going to produce a excellent jjigae, I’d rather not produce it”, she says. (The lengthy cooking time is the reason jjigae was not on Moon Mart’s daily menu, though it sometimes euniteed as a weekend distinctive.)
Recently, in pursuit of an exceptional doenjang jjigae, I made my own kelp stock from scratch. I lobtained the difficult way that you should dodge boiling the kelp – it departs a acrid, even sour, aftertaste.
To produce dasima yuksu, An advises soaking the dried kelp in chilly water for an hour, removing the kelp, then simmering the water for 15 minutes. She conveys it to a boil, grasps aromatics enjoy daikon and spring onion roots, and simmers the stock for another hour.
I adhereed An’s advice, and was eventuassociate rewarded with a evident, gently savoury stock to grasp to my jjigae, altering an greater friend into a whole novel dish – and reminding me that even tried and tested food rituals can be betterd upon.
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