The Soup Review: Yook Gae Jang (Korean Beef and Scallion Soup)

This is one of my favorite dishes of all time and is the inspiration for my own spicy noodle soups.  Enoki mushrooms, scallions, egg, clear noodles (dak myun), and long ropes of chewy yet tender pulled beef come together in a wonderfully spicy-savory broth.  Today's rendition was courtesy of the Wooram Korean restaurant found in the Edison H-Mart.  Red pepper figures heavily into this hot soup in both dried and paste form, so it is not for the faint of heart, nor those prone to heartburn.  In doing a little research online, there are variations in what goes in(of course), but I think that I prefer this type.  Bean sprouts, mushrooms and fern bracken are possible ingredients, and the egg can be cooked separately.  If you ever have the chance to eat and/or cook this soup... do it!

Homemade Vegetable Stock and Soup

 Inspired by some celery and carrots laying about in the fridge that I knew weren't going to be eaten otherwise, I decided to have a go at making homemade vegetable stock.  And then from stock, to soup.  I first brushed with vegetable oil and then roasted the vegetables (onion, garlic, celery, carrot) in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  It took just over half an hour for the skin on the carrots and celery to start bubbling; a bit of charring is fine too.  I used a whole garlic bulb; slice the top of it off to facilitate the later creation of garlic paste.  Roasting the vegetables really boosts their flavor in preparation for some long, slow simmering.  Once the vegetables are finished roasting, put all of them into a large enough pot (or in this case, saucepan).  Keep the skins on, as this will also enhance the broth's flavor.  Cover the vegetables with water and add a bundle of fresh herbs tied together with cooking twine.  I used thyme, basil, and sage, which grow in my little container garden.  Add one bay leaf, bring to a boil, and simmer for a nice long time. 

I decided to keep it all covered, instead of letting the water boil off, since I was planning on using it shortly thereafter and saw no sense in just having to add more water to the soup.  Two or three hours later, I removed all solids from the broth with a slotted spoon into a colander positioned over a large bowl.  The garlic I reserved on the side in a smaller bowl.  All other vegetables were pressed with a wooden spoon to extract the last of their juices into the large bowl, to be reunified with the broth in the saucepan.  These vegetables were then discarded.  The garlic was squeezed out of its skin (the skin discarded) and mashed into a paste with a fork.  This paste then went back into the broth.  I stored the broth in a tupperware container until I was ready to make vegetable soup.

Soup Ingredients

1 lb carrots, tops discarded and sliced
8 oz baby portabella mushrooms, sliced
1 cup frozen corn
1 lb canned diced tomatoes
8 oz kale greens
4 cups homemade vegetable broth*
3/4 cup low sodium chicken broth (optional: if omitted, this soup becomes vegan)
2 tbsp black ground pepper
1 tsp dried oregano flakes
1 squirt Sriracha sauce (optional)
water, to cover vegetables

*There are very good vegetable bouillon cubes available at the grocery store; I had some of my mother's excellent vegetable soup this past weekend and she had used bouillon.  I cannot speak for its sodium content, however.

To make the soup, place all of the above ingredients except for the kale into your pot, stir, and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 hour or until carrots are soft, stirring occasionally.  Add kale and stir in, cooking for an additional 10 minutes.  Serve hot.

I was extremely pleased with the results of this soup, and I think you will be too, if you try to use this recipe!

 

Hearty Beef Stew

I must say that this is truly one of the tastiest recipes that I have worked with.  Beef stew is best made with chuck steak, a flavorful cut that is perfect for long and slow simmering.  Its connective tissue and high amount of marbling helps to thicken the stew.  Grocery stores often do sell it pre-cut in chunks for stew, but it is better to buy a whole steak if you can and do your own cutting to ensure more evenly sized pieces (about one and a half inch cubes).  I unfortunately had no choice in the matter when I went to the grocery store- there was only the pre-cut option.  Most of the pieces were smaller than I would have liked, and there was little consistency in the actual size.  At least it was the correct cut of meat, and it is convenient to not have to do your own chopping.

I pulled the recipe almost directly from Cook's Illustrated, with only a few minor changes.  A bit more garlic, for instance, and I used a cabernet sauvignon as opposed to a drier red wine.  They also recommended waiting to put the vegetables in halfway through the cooking time, but the first time I tried this, I ended up having to cook the whole thing an extra hour because the potatoes and carrots were still quite crunchy after only one hour.  This is very likely due to my oven being very old and inefficient, so if you have a more modern appliance, you may want to follow Cook's Illustrated's lead unless you like very mushy vegetables.

Ingredients

3 lbs chuck steak, chopped into 1 1/2 inch cubes
1 lb red potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces
1 lb baby carrots
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 cup thawed frozen peas
1 cup dry (and/or) full-bodied red wine 
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp flour
5 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 bay leaves
fresh or dried thyme, to taste
ground black pepper

If you are feeling up to the task, pearl onions are a wonderful addition to this stew.  I meant to try to add portabella mushrooms this time, but I forgot that I had them in the refrigerator.  I'm sure that they would be delicious, too.  A dutch oven would be perfect for this; alas I do not yet have one.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.  Liberally season the beef with black pepper.  Heat 1 tbsp of vegetable oil over medium high heat until it has a lovely shimmer to it.  Working in batches, brown the meat on at least two sides.  Tongs are very helpful for this.  The reason you should work in batches is that if each cube of meat doesn't have a bit of breathing room around it, they will not brown.  Instead, they will steam, turn gray, and become tough.  It takes about 4 minutes for smaller cubes to brown, and I only flip them once (regardless of size).  Keep an eye on them; don't entirely rely on the timer.  About halfway through browning the beef, you will need to add another tbsp of oil to the pot.  Put the browned cubes in a bowl to the side once finished.

Now, turn the heat down to medium low, add the last tbsp of oil, and add your onions, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to dislodge all of the browned bits left over from the meat.  Once the onions have softened (about 4 to 5 minutes), add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds.  In goes the flour.  Keep stirring and mixing everything together for another minute or two, at which point the flour should become a light brown.  Add the wine, stirring everything together and again scraping the bottom of the pot, until the wine begins to thicken.  At this point, gradually stir in the chicken broth.  Once all the liquid is in the pan, put your thyme and bay leaves in, and bring to a simmer.  Add the beef, carrots, and potatoes; stir and bring to a simmer once more.  Cover and put in the oven for two hours.

At the end of the two hours, take the pot out of the oven and stir in the frozen peas.  After about five minutes, the stew will be ready to serve.  Enjoy!

PS- This recipe works very well for venison stew meat as well.  I treated the venison in almost the same manner; browning time was decreased by a couple of minutes, and I allowed the stew to cook for three instead of two hours.  All other steps were identical, and the results were fantastically delicious!

Hearty Chicken Soup

It's a chilly October morning, and Andrew, my significant other, is suffering from one of the many autumn viruses going around.  As it happens, I know the perfect cure- chicken soup (and decongestant).  I was also looking for an excuse to make a soup that isn't usually on my menu.  I looked at a few recipes for ideas, including in my Cook's Illustrated: The New Best Recipe cookbook.  I really do love my Cook's Illustrated cookbook, but sometimes they get a little too scientific for me.  I also didn't feel up to the task of making my own chicken stock- as much as I enjoy cooking (and eating the results), I didn't want to be in the kitchen all day.  I finally went with one of the Pioneer Woman's recipes as a base, although I did change it up a bit.

I chose chicken thighs over a whole chicken for several reasons.  Working with a whole chicken is unwieldy, whereas smaller bits are easier to deal with.  Dark meat (to me, anyway) is more tender, more flavorful, and far more juicy.  I knew I was going to get a very rich broth from all of those thighs.  If you choose to follow my lead, you do want the skin-on and bone-in thighs, as both skin (high in fat) and bone (delicious marrow flavor) contribute a lot to the end product.  Another bonus: chicken thighs are much cheaper to buy than a whole chicken.  I must give credit to Andrew for pointing all of these things out even through a congested haze, because I was originally going to just buy what all of the other recipes had suggested.  I used roughly three or four pounds of chicken thighs and saved two for Andrew to make his famous chicken sandwiches.

I'm sure you would like to know what the rest of the ingredients are:

-10 ounces Swanson's unsalted chicken broth
-1 large turnip, peeled and chopped into bite-size pieces
-4 whole carrots, sliced
-4 celery ribs, chopped
-2 small onions or 1 large onion, diced
-1 cup uncooked barley
-1 tbsp cumin
-dash of oregano
-bundle of fresh herbs (in this case thyme, sage, and basil) tied together with cooking twine
-4 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
-1 bay leaf
-enough water to cover all ingredients if broth does not prove to be enough liquid to do so

One ingredient that I would have liked to add is ground black pepper, and there is a quite simple explanation for why there is not any present: I forgot to pick up more whilst out shopping.  It is always a terrible feeling as one drives away from the store and remembers that they forgot something rather crucial.  However, this soup proves that one does not need black pepper to create an amazingly comforting and delicious soup.  I would also like to point out that there is NO added salt- none whatsoever, and it was not missed.

I briefly toyed with the idea of roasting the vegetables to bring out more flavor, but was feeling so lazy as to not even saute them in the stockpot first.  I simply put everything except the barley into the pot, covered it all with a combination of chicken broth and water, and gave it a stir.  After the soup came to a boil, I turned the heat down to a simmer, and let the simmering liquid do its magic for two hours.  At this point, I removed the chicken thighs with a slotted spoon, as well as the bundle of fresh herbs, which was disintegrating.  If the chicken is not yet tender enough where the skin is falling off of the meat and the meat is falling off of the bone, it needs more time.  I set the chicken aside to cool down to the point where I could remove the meat from the bone by hand, and added my cup of barley to the still simmering vegetables and broth.  It takes 45 minutes for the barley to be ready, and that is plenty of time for the chicken to cool down and for me to separate the meat from the skin and bones.  I shredded the chicken meat into nice bite-sized chunks and put it back into the soup.  Once the barley was ready (it expands to several times its original size, and ought to be only slightly chewy), the soup was done.  Despite my avoidance of doing anything extra fancy with the ingredients, it turned out to be one of the tastiest soups that I have ever made.

Spicy Bok Choi and Beef Noodle Soup

This is one of several versions of spicy Asian-style noodle soup that I enjoy making, and last night's batch was especially good.  I was a little generous with the Korean red pepper, resulting in something a bit more fiery than usual- but that's perfect for these damp and chilly fall days!  I do caution the reader that "to taste" is most important here: what is "fiery" for myself and Andrew often is impossibly spicy for our friends, for instance.

To begin, one must collect the ingredients.  We took a trip to our local H-Mart, a huge and exciting Asian grocery store.  It is understandable that not everywhere has easy access to such places, but one might get lucky at their local food market, or make use of the internet to order supplies online.

Ingredients :
-Korean coarse red pepper powder, to taste
-chipotle chili powder, to taste
-reduced sodium soy sauce, about 1/4 cup
-1 tbsp mirin
-1 tbsp vegetable oil
-1 tbsp bulgogi marinade
-four cloves of garlic, crushed
-three bunches of baby bok choi
-3/4 lb thinly sliced beef rib-eye steak
-two bunches of "MasterChef whole grain Asian noodle" (or any amount of any type of Asian noodle that you desire)
  
*Serves two

 To begin making the soup, marinate thinly sliced rib-eye steak in soy sauce; if you want to, add some Korean bulgogi marinade (which I just happened to have on hand last night).  Let the meat sit in the marinade for one hour unrefrigerated.  Meanwhile, rinse your bok choi.  I recommend baby bok choi, since I prefer a higher leaf to stem ratio.  Chop the stalks up to the base of the leaf; reserve the leaves for the end of the cooking process.  Heat one tablespoon of vegetable oil in your soup pot on medium-high until there is a nice sheen to the oil.  Add your chopped bok choi stalks to the oil, stirring with a wooden spoon to evenly coat them with the hot oil.  Add (Korean) red pepper powder and chipotle chili powder to taste.  Cook, stirring with medium frequency, until the spice begins to stick to the bottom of the pot.  Deglaze with mirin (a type of sweet Japanese cooking wine) and turn off the heat.  Crush fresh garlic and stir it into the pot at this time.

When your beef is ready, heat a non-stick skillet on high heat.  Working in batches, quickly sear the beef until it is browned, adding each batch to the soup pot.  Tongs are extremely helpful for this.  If you have any marinade left after cooking the beef, add that to the soup pot as well.  Add enough water to the pot to cover all of the ingredients, keeping in consideration that you have yet to add your noodles and bok choi leaves.  Stir, cover, and bring to a boil.

Once the water is boiling, add your noodles.  Most Asian-type noodles do not need very much time to cook at all.  I usually use a generic type of Asian noodle, but have used rice and glass noodles to good effect.  I suspect udon and ramen noodles would work very well too.  Most noodles recommend being cooked separately and then being added to the recipe.  I do not do this for two reasons: to reduce clean up time, and also because I have a very small kitchen.  Feel free to follow this recommendation if you like, but I've always found my soup to be quite satisfactory with the noodles cooked in the broth.  After about five minutes boiling my noodles, I added the bok choi leaves and boiled for one more minute.  Cool slightly and serve.  Enjoy this spicy-savory soup!