Ginseng Chicken Soup

Ginseng Chicken Soup is called "Sam Gae Tang" in Korean. Ginseng Chicken Soup is eaten on hottest days during summer season in Korea, believing that the nutrients from the herbs and proteins from the chicken can help nourish your body in summer when one can easily lose appetite and become weak from over sweating. According to the lunar calender, there are three hottest days in summer: one in the beginning of summer, one in the middle, and one towards the end of the summer. Sam gae tang is eaten for lunch on any of these days in Korea. Its ingredients are the ones commonly used in Chinese medicinal purposes: ginseng, and dates along with sweet rice, garlic and chest nuts. The flavor of this soup is really good. It's mild with a strong and concentrated chicken stock with flavors of the herbs.

Ingredients: whole young chicken (gutted), sweet rice, ginseng, dried dates, chestnuts, sliced ginger, several cloves of garlic, green onions


1. First, you need to put sweet rice in water and let it sit for 30 minutes at least until the rice softens up.

2. Take the chicken and broaden its rear for stuffing purpose.

3. Stuff it with the softened sweet rice, chestnuts, whole garlic, sliced gingers, and ginseng. Stuff as much as you can and try to close the opening with big pieces of dates and chestnuts.



4. Close its legs and carefully place it in an earthen bowl.

5. Add water, and add some garlic cloves, ginseng, and dates for flavoring the stock.

6. Place it on a stove and cook initially for 20 minutes in high heat.

Add some more water as the stock evaporates. Make sure you have enough water and your chicken is fully cooked in the first 20 minutes. You can flip the chicken and put it back to its original position.

7. After 20 minutes, put the lid on and turn the heat down to medium. Continue cooking for additional 40-45 minutes.
8. Constantly, open the lid and get rid of cooked blood clots found in foams using a netted spoon. You need to get rid of all these little dirty chunks and make the broth as clear as possible.


This is how clear the broth should be in the end.

9. Cut green onions and throw them onto the soup as garnish and flavoring.
Don't forget to add salt and pepper to the soup as needed. I also use salt and pepper on a side dish for dipping chicken meat. Also, this dish goes great with ginseng ju (ginseng wine) below. Enjoy!

Spicy Miso Beef Stew

This spicy miso beef stew is called Doenjang Jjigae in Korean. It is one of the most traditional Korean foods one can find along with Kimchi. The Korean miso paste called Doenjang is the key ingredient of this soup.

Doenjang is produced with dried soybeans that are boiled and stoned-ground into fine bits. This paste is molded up into big blocks similar to bricks, which are called Meju. These blocks are then put out in the sunlight and let it mold and therefore the fermentation process begins. This mold to the soybean is a type of vacteria that is good for health, similar to the ones used in the fermentation process of milk to produce yogurt. This Meju is one stinky piece of block. I remember as a child, I hated the smell of it whenever my grandma made those meju and hung them along the fence. So after these meju blocks are sun dried, they are placed in a warmer place to speed up the fermentation. Later these meju blocks are put into large opaque pottery jars with water and salt. For a month, they are being salted inside the jar. The meju blocks are finely crushed and mixed with water into a paste. Once fully salted, put more salt on top and then the cover of the jar is removed and replaced with a thin net to screen debris and insects from entering. Then now the mixture of exposed in the sunlight for 40 days for a full fermentation process. Now I remember when I was a child, my grandpa used to run outside and cover up these opaque pottery jars to prevent rain from entering into the jar. They were really serious about their Doenjang.

But seriously, making doenjang at home is not as realistic in modern days when people live in cities and apartments. Although if you're gungho about keeping the traditional flavor of Korean cuisine, homemade Doenjang is the best tasting condiment for many Korean dishes, most people give up the opportunity cost of this traditional flavor for a easy lifestyle. I am one of the latter people maybe because I am still young but also because I live in a student apartment. I cannot imagine hanging up stinky meju blocks outside my windows.

You can buy a pack or a container of Doenjang from a Korean supermarket. In English, it is a miso paste but that is somewhat overally generalized because there is Japanese miso paste that is quite different from the Korean miso paste. You need to buy the Korean miso paste in order to prepare this dish.

Ingredients: 2 tsp Doenjang, 1tsp clambase, 1tsp minced garlic, 1tsp red pepper powder, zucchini, enoki mushrooms, serrano chili peppers, red chili pepper, onion, potato, firm tofu, and beef



1. Boil water. I bought this traditional Korean earthen bowl from a Korean supermarket for making stews.

2. Add a tsp of clambase. Often, by adding clambase, you're adding more deep flavor for the soup broth and enough sodium so that you won't need to add salt later. Some Doenjang Jjigae uses fresh manila clams with shells instead. If you have some, use them.

3. Add 2tsp of Doenjang to the mix.

4. Now chop all your vegetable ingredients including tofu/beef before adding to the soup.


5. Add beef, potatoes first. After 2 minutes of boiling, add the rest of the vegetables.

6. After another 2 minutes, add tofu and sprinkle some red pepper powder on top and let the boiling soup cook it along with tofu. As a final touch (20 seconds before turning off your heat), add chopped green onions.

This is the final version of Doenjang Jjigae. Enjoy!

Sukiyaki Hot Pot

Sukiyaki is a Japanese style hot pot consisting of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of beaten raw eggs.

Generally sukiyaki is for the colder days of the year and it is commonly found at bōnenkai, Japanese year-end parties. There is a Japanese saying that says when you and your friends eat out of a same pot, your bond with them will become stronger. Let's then invite our friends or disfunctional family members and eat Sukiyaki together.

Ingredients: dried Shitake mushrooms, cabbage (preferably Chinese cabbage), thinly sliced beef, Japanese sweet potato noodles (konnyaku: jelly style noodles contained in a plastic bag with water), firm tofu, fish cake, Enoki mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, green onion, regular button mushrooms, eggs, soy sauce, salt, chicken base, mirin, brown sugar, sesame oil, ginger powder

1. Put dried Shitake mushrooms in warm water and let if soften up for 30 minutes.


2. Take all your ingredients out of your refrigirator. :)

3. Chop all the ingredients into small pieces.
This is Enoki mushroom. Cut off the dirty root part and throw it away.
Firm tofu

Fish cake (Oden)
Put them on a single dish and bring it next to the pot.

4. Boil water.

5. Using soy sauce, mirin, chicken base, sugar, sesame oil, salt, and sugar, you are not going to make the soup base.

For my version with 3 cups of water, I added 1 table spoon of chicken base.

4 tablespoons of mirin and soy sauce. Keep tasting until it's right.

Add little bit of salt, ginger powder, 2 table spoons of sesame oil and sugar. Make sure you keep tasting until it tastes right to you. Some people like it sweeter, some people don't, for example.

6. Now put those ingredients into the soup base once it heats up.

This is the picture of Konnyaku, a Japanese sweet potato noodle bag. Make sure you put all the juice inside the bag into your pot as well.

If you go to an Asian market, you can easily find those thin cut beef slices. Some are even labeled as Sukiyaki beef. If there is none in your neighborhood, you can ask your butcher at a market to slice them for you or try to slice them yourself at home. When you do it, make sure you slice it when the beef is semi-frozen so it will cut easily.

So once you add them all, organizing them section by section (good presentation always makes your food more appealing regardless of the flavor... before eating at least that is.)

Keep heating up the pot until the ingredients are fully cooked, especially the beef.

For the raw egg side dish, you put an egg in a small bowl and beat it.


Then dip your beef or other ingredients into your raw egg before eating.
I'm sure some people do not find this appetizing. It's perfectly fine. In that case, you can use Japanese sesame sauce and vinegar sauce. For vinegar sauce, which is called Sambai-Zu, it is used for dipping vegetables. You mix with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 talespoon of rice vinegar, and sugar. For sesame sauce, which is called Gomadare, you mix with 6 tablespoons white sesame seeds, 200 ml dashi, 5 tablespoons sake, 1 tablespoon mirin, 1 teaspoon sugar, 3 tablespoons soy sauce.

Soon Tofu Seafood Stew (Soon Doo Boo Jjigae)

Soon tofu stew is becoming extremely popular in the U.S. it probably now is the stew of Korea in most people’s mind.  I never had it when I was in Korea ironically.  I think it was more of a specialty in some regions in Korea and not an everyday comfort food for most Koreans.  What I used to eat was miso stew and kimchi stew instead.  Where I lived in Seattle, WA, there was a restaurant called Ho Soon Yi that makes Soon tofu stew (Soon doo boo jigae) exclusively.  I always saw just as many non-Koreans there enjoying this stew as Koreans.  This dish is so popular, there are franchise restaurants in Southern California specializing just soon tofu stews such as BCD Tofu House which is open for 24 hours.  Although I like restaurant foods, there is nothing that beats some wholesome home cooked meals.  Some restaurants use MSG to enhance flavors of their food.  My body is super sensitive to MSGs whenever I eat food with MSGs, I feel disgusted and cranky.  It’s almost like I’m hungover.  So I tried making this at home and seriously this turned out to be the best tasting stew I have ever cooked in my life.  This is easily my #1 dish.

Ingredients: Bacon, chili pepper oil, sesame oil, clam base, salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce, finely ground red pepper powder, minced garlic, kimchi (and juice), tofu (soft/silk), eggs, onions, zucchini or mushrooms, red/green peppers (jalapeño is ok), seafood (shrimp, squid, and if you have clams, use clams as well).

1. First, cook bacon in chili pepper oil.

2. Once bacon is cooked, add onions and minced garlic. At this time, after allowing garlic to cook for maybe 20 seconds, you need to throw in other ingredients below.

Thinly sliced green and red peppers
Add kimchi and its juice, and sliced zucchinis.


3. Add water and clam base. For the below portion, I used 1 1/2 table spoon of clam base. Do not put too much in the beginning because you can always add some more later if bland.


4. Prepare your seafood. I am using shrimp and squid for mine. If you have clams, use them. Real clams will make this dish look and taste great.

Add the sliced seafood into your soup.

5. So now it’s time to add tofu to your soup. See the sign that says “silken”. Do not use firm tofu for this stew because it will create an entirely different stew. When adding the tofu, you do not need to cut it. Just put the whole thing in. Of course, do not just turn it upside down and drop it from 3 feet above the pot and create a disaster. Use a big spoon or a spatula to carefully transfer it into the stew.





6. Keep on heating (high heat) and add little bit of sugar. Continue heating for additional 5-7 minutes and add fish sauce towards the end. I used about 2-3 table spoons of fish sauce for below amount of stew. Fish sauce will seal the deal for this stew flavor-wise.  Traditionally though, what you use instead of the fish sauce is salt pickled shrimps called “Se woo jut.” However, fish sauce will do the justice since that ingredient is harder to find and to utilize in your daily cooking.




7. Turn off the heat and add a raw egg. Let the egg cook but not fully cook so when serving in a bowl, each person will have the half cooked egg on top of their soup. I usually save my egg yolk without popping the yolk into the soup and put it on my rice along with some stew broth and mix them around. The egg part is optional but you will see that you can add a raw egg into your boiling stew in an earthen bowl.


You won’t be disappointed with this recipe.