Cooking Doenjangjigae

We are a bit disappointed with the availability of Korean food in Louisville. Searching online shows a handful of restaurants and asian grocery stores which bit by bit we have been scouting out on weekends. Isaac drives slowly through old, half abandoned strip malls while I squint trying to read the signs and find which one belongs to the restaurant or market. The restaurants haven't tempted us much, all having menus that are two to three times the price of what we paid a few months ago.

But being without Korean food these past months has left our stomachs feeling a little lacking. So this week I finally worked up the courage to try making one of the dishes myself.

I found a well-maintained little grocery store, one of its blacked out windows saying 우리 식품, "our food/grocery". Inside it had all of the Korean ingredients I was missing to make a delicious and much missed dinner.

Doen-jang-jj-gae is one of the essential Korean dishes. This soup has a unique, instantly recognizable smell and unforgettable flavor. For westerners it might be an acquired taste, but with repeated exposure it quickly becomes addicting.

Often it is served at meat restaurants - after you eat your fill of grilled meat, hot stone pots of bubbling doenjangjigae are brought out with cups of rice. And somehow you find room to gulp it all down. So Isaac and I developed a nice system - we would go to a samgyupsal (grilled pork belly) restaurant and order meat for two people and one doenjangjigae. He would eat all of the meat, while I would happily sip my soup.

To the left is a picture I snapped from such a night. Isaac tending to the meat cooking at the small charcoal grill between us, me breathing in the steam from a bubbling pot of doenjangjigae. This is the soup we've been pining for recently.

Even to me it seems kind of pathetic that I've never made this dish - especially considering it's one of the basics of Korean cuisine and that I lived in Korea for almost a year. I was planning on getting a lesson either from my father-in-law or Korean friend, but time ran away before I had the opportunity. I have eaten it enough though, examining each spoonful, sipping the broth and noting its ingredients, to have a good idea of its taste and composition.

So, about those special ingredients that make this soup unforgettable.

Doenjang is a fermented soybean paste, and a foundational taste of the traditional Korean diet. It is all kinds of good-for-you, perhaps most famous for aiding with digestion and being anticarcinogenic.

The unique fishy stock used in many Korean soups and sauces is another must. It can be a little off-putting at first. The first time I tried making it in Korea, I freaked out and asked my neighbor for help. "It smells just like fish food!" Precisely like the little flakes you shook into your goldfish bowl as a child. She calmly told me that the smell was normal. It does have fish in it after all. And as strange as its first impression might be, in the end it blends seamlessly into the smell and taste of many Korean dishes. If its not used, food often tastes a bit bland or incomplete.

The two essential parts of this soup stock are anchovies and a specific kind of seaweed called dashima. Families and restaurants develop their own secret recipes and guard them with pride. As a novice, I'm not going for gold, nor do I want giant bags of fish and leathery seaweed hanging out in my pantry and freezer. Lucky for me, I brought this little helper back with me from Korea.

The Korean writing actually calls this a teabag which cracks me up. This is the world's most disgusting tea bag. But it is also the perfect little pouch of anchovies and seaweed, just the right portion to make soup stock for two.

Nothing unfamiliar about these other ingredients! Here are the veggies I used for making doenjangjigae and a marinade for stir-fried beef.

It seems like there is usually a lot of chopping involved with making Korean food. But once you get used to it, it can be a good thing. Do all of the prep work well ahead of time, and the cooking part can be quite simple!

For my first attempt at doenjangjigae, I took inspiration from two different recipes. One from the popular Korean cooking blogger called Maangchi (found here) and one from a Korean cookbook we bought while living in Korea.

This is actually a cookbook for making quick and simple dishes for kids. I perused several cookbooks but chose this one because it seemed like the perfect introduction to cooking Korean tastes without being too overly complicated. And even though Isaac agreed, it still felt kind of funny to buy a cookbook to feed my husband meals intended for 6-13 year olds.

What I chose to make is a pretty simple version of this soup. I look forward to tweaking it in the future and maybe getting some tips from Isaac's family to make it even more delicious.

After a fair amount of chopping and a few onion tears, I put the fishy tea bag, diced garlic and chunks of onions, zucchini, potato and spicy pepper into a pot with a few cups of water. Brought it to a boil, then added a few spoonfuls of doenjang paste. It's potent stuff, so I was careful not to overdo it.

I turned the heat down and put the lid on for about 15 minutes. Then dropped in chunks of tofu. A few more minutes, drop the green onions in and it's done!

I plopped some rice in my large bowl of doenjangjigae and served Isaac a smaller bowl along with stir fried beef, rice and traditional side dishes I picked up at the Korean grocer.

It tasted great to me but even more savory was Isaac's reaction. I kept silent and sipped my soup, eager to hear from him but not wanting to affect his judgment. A few "mmm!"s later, he asked for more of everything. And that was when I knew that I'd done all right.