NORTH KOREA: DUMPLING SOUP WITH PULLED BRISKET, RICE CAKE, EGG PANCAKE, STICKY RICE AND GREEN LAVAR SEAWEED SIDES

 

North Korea (officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), is a country in East Asia bordered by China, Russia and South Korea. North Korean food practices are rooted in ancient culinary traditions that reflect the region’s agricultural history. Staples include short grain rice, maize, and noodles, which are often served with blonde kimchi, pickled vegetables and seaweed. With influences from Chinese and Russian food cultures, the flavours in North Korean cooking today are bold yet balanced, emphasising delicious savory tastes of brothy, meaty umami and pleasantly tangy fermentation. 

 

Cooking in North Korea leans into the natural flavours of foods, letting individual ingredients speak for themselves. It is typically less spicy-hot than South Korean food and often marries a sweet and sour flavour palette

with crisp or subtly pungent spice aromas. Hearty stews and soups are popular, and meals often feature simple, locally sourced ingredients such as wild greens and seafood. Various types of Mandu (dumplings) are a commonly loved, delicious way to stretch a small amount of meat to feed many mouths. 

 

Food security is an ongoing issue for North Koreans. Most of their country is rugged mountain terrain and less than 20% of their land is fertile enough to grow crops. Natural disasters (especially floods & typhoons) have devasted farmlands for decades leaving a generation of North Korean cooks with half empty shopping baskets. The United Nations World Food Program currently provides lifesaving food for 1 million pregnant women, nursing mothers and children at risk of malnutrition in North Korea.  I didn’t want to just cook a meal in my food-privileged home, then post a story and photo of what I cooked here - so I made a donation to The United Nations World Food Program to buy food for a North Korean family and if you wanted to as well here is the link. https://www.wfp.org/countries/democratic-peoples-republic-korea

 

our

NORTH KOREAN

menu included

DUMPLING SOUP WITH PULLED BRISKET AND RICE CAKE

with

STICKY RICE

served with sides of

Kimchee and toasted Green Lavar Seaweed

 

 

DUMPLING SOUP WITH PULLED BRISKET AND RICE CAKE -

Tteok Mandu Guk

 

Tteok Mandu Guk is not just any soup, it is an extraordinary meal with many parts. Relatively easy to make, it takes us on a surprising journey of flavours and textures. It has culinary relationships with similar South Korean soups but what makes this Tteok Mandu Guk uniquely North Korean is adding sticky rice into the bowl alongside the rice cake (making it a rice-in-two-ways soup) 

 

INGREDIENTS:

 

Key Ingredients:

·      300 gm Korean Rice Cake – or replace with Japanese Mochi, sliced thin

·      12 frozen dumplings - called Mandu in North Korea (or 3 per person), we used prawn dumplings which married very well with the brisket

Note: in North Korea kimchee pork dumplings are popularly used for this soup; see link below if you want to make them yourself from scratch https://mykoreankitchen.com/kimchi-mandu-kimchi-dumplings/

 

Beef Stock Ingredients:

·      500 gm beef brisket (or substitute with chuck steak or gravy beef)

·      1 large onion peeled and cut in half

·      2 large green onion/shallot, washed, cleaned and cut in half in the middle

·      1 tsp Korean Soup Soy Sauce (or substitute 1 tsp regular soy sauce, 1 tsp fish sauce and 1 tbs miso soup paste)

·      1 cm knob fresh ginger, peeled and cut in half

·      2 large cloves garlic, peeled and cut in half

·      2.5 ltr cold water

·      1 tsp salt

 

Brisket Seasoning Ingredients:

·      1 tsp soy sauce

·      4 tbs finely chopped Korean/Garlic Chives

·      4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

·      2 tsp sesame oil

·      1 tsp brown sugar

·      2 pinches freshly cracked black pepper (or to taste)

·      2 pinches red chilli powder (or to taste - or for people who need the heat dialled back - replace with smoked paprika for a similar flavour pallet)

·      1 tsp salt

 

Garnish:

·      3 eggs, lightly beaten

·      1 tsp sesame oil

·      1 green onion/shallot, washed cleaned and sliced on the diagonal

·      15 gm thinly sliced dry Korean Green Lavar Seaweed sheets- that have been toasted in corn oil and sesame oil (available in Australia as a snack food), or replace with toasted, sliced Japanese nori seaweed

 

Sided Dish:

·      Sticky Rice (recipe below)

·      400 gm North Korean Kimchee – or enough for a side dish for each person

Note: North Korean Kimchee is generally lighter in colour and less spicy than South Korean Kimchee (due to less chillies being added). You can buy fresh North Korean Kimchee from your local Asian grocer or follow the link below for a recipe to make authentic North Korean Kimchee from scratch at home. 

https://www.youngpioneertours.com/north-south-korean-kimchi/

 

TIPS to be aware of along the way:

Ø  Whilst the Brisket is cooking you will prepare the sticky rice 

Ø  Whilst the Brisket is cooling you will prepare the egg and other garnishes

 

Method:

1.    Begin by placing the brisket in a deep dish, covering it with cold water and letting it soak in the fridge for 30 minutes to remove blood from the meat (this step helps to make a clearer soup but can be skipped if time is tight) 

2.    After soaking drain and discard the water and begin making the stock

3.    Take a large pot, add the brisket and all the other Beef Stock ingredients

4.    Gently bring the pot to the boil, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, turn the heat back to a simmer, cover the pot with a lid, and gently cook the brisket for 1 hour or until meat is tender

Notes: while making the stock and cooking the brisket look under the lid regularly to make sure all is going well. Pay attention to the ‘behaviour’ of the liquid in the pot and adjust temperature to ensure it is just simmering, as it can suddenly come to the boil. Also, if any froth or fat appears on the surface of the simmering liquid skim those off with a spoon or small ladle

5.    Whilst the stock and brisket are cooking: cook the stick rice (recipe below)

6.    Once tender, remove the brisket to a dish to cool

7.    Strain the soup into a new large cooking pot and discard the onions etc

8.    Whilst meat is cooling prepare eggs for garnish

9.    Take a wide fry pan, add sesame oil and gently heat up on the stove. Sesame oil burns easily so don’t make it too hot too fast

10.         Once the pan is hot pour in the beaten egg and tip the pan around a bit to spread the egg out into a large thin egg ‘pancake’

11.         Cook the egg until it begins to brown and bubble (about 1-2 mins) then use a spatula to flip the pancake over and repeat on the other side

12.         Remove egg from pan and cool on a plate or chopping board. Once cooled roll the egg into a cigar shape and slice thinly from one end to the other to create circular ribbons of cooked egg (place in fridge till ready to serve)

13.         Now mix all the brisket seasoning ingredients together in a bowl

14.         Cut the Green Lavar Seaweed into thin strips and set aside in a bowl

15.         Once the brisket is cooled place it on a chopping board and tip any juices that have been released during cooling time into the soup pot

16.         Cut the meat against the grain in 4 cm wide pieces

Note: You can identify the ‘grain’ on a piece of  brisket in a similar way to  how you find the grain on a piece of wood. If you look closely, you will see that your piece of brisket has thin parallel lines of connective fibres running along it. Those lines are the grain. Cutting across the grain (rather than cutting with- or parallel to- the grain), cuts through  tough muscle fibres, breaking and shortening them, making the meat more tender.

17.         Now pull the pieces of cooked brisket into shreds with your clean hands and place them in a medium to large bowl

18.         Add the seasoning mix to the bowl and hand massage the seasoning into the pulled brisket then set aside in the fridge so all the flavours combine  

19.         Now we return to the beef broth/soup stock

20.         Take a small ladle and skim off any froth or liquid fat that has risen to the top whilst the soup stock has been resting

21.         Bring the soup to the boil and skim again. We are now ready to poach the dumplings and rice cakes in the stock. Frozen dumplings will take about 8 mins to cook and sliced rice cake about 3

22.         Add the frozen dumplings to the boiling soup pot, cover pot, bring back to the boil then simmer about 5 minutes before adding the rice cake. do not overcook or rice cake will fall apart. Dumplings and cakes are cooked when floating at the top of the soup

23.         We are now ready to put the  soup together 

24.         Take high-sided Asian-style soup bowls, place a large ladle of soup stock into each, followed by 3 dumplings and 3-4 slices of poached rice cake. Add into each bowl a handful of seasoned brisket, topped with circles of egg pancake, sliced shallots and sliced lava seaweed

25.         Serve with sides of sticky rice, blonde Kimchee and extra lava seaweed

 

NORTH KOREAN STICKY RICE

 

INGREDIENTS:

·      1 and 2/3 cup short grain rice 

·      2 cups water (to cook the rice in)

·      1 tsp salt

 

Method:

1.    Place rice in a sieve and wash it 3 times under cold running water until water runs clear then cover it in fresh water and let it soak of 30 mins

2.    Drain the water off the rice (and discard the water, or use in your garden)

3.    Add the rice to a medium pot with the 2 cups water and the salt and bring to the boil, stirring often with a wooden/bamboo spoon

4.    Once rice is boiling turn the heat back to very low, put a lid on the pot and let it cook for 20 minutes. 

TIP: From this point don’t take the lid off again until ready to serve the rice

5.    After 20 minutes turn the heat off and let the pot sit and steam on the cooling element for at least 10 minutes until soup is ready to serve

 

Note:  You can make this North Korean Sticky Rice recipe for any amount of rice. Just follow the rule that for every 1 cup of dry rice that you wash 3 times and soak for 30 mins, you will need to add 1.2 cup water to the pot to steam it. So, for example, for 4 cups of rice you will need 4.8 cups water 

 

These are Q-ZINE original recipes informed by multiple sources including but not limited to:

https://mykoreankitchen.com/manduguk-korean-dumpling-soup/

https://kimchimari.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Tteokguk-Tteok-Rice-Cake-slices-for-Soup.jpg

https://kimchimari.com/mandu-kimchi-korean-dumpling/

http://www.healthy-life.narod.ru/wor_ek157.htm

https://northkorearecipes.wordpress.com/category/main-courses/

https://kimchimari.com/how-to-make-korean-rice-on-stovetop/

https://koryogroup.com/blog/8-famous-aquatic-foods-of-north-korea

https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_HK/inspiration/dining/seouls-authentic-north-korean-dishes.html