Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Off We Go to South Korea!: Soondubu!

Hey hey everyone!

Happy Sunday morning to you all.

How is everyone holding up this summer?

We’ve had a couple of warm and humid days but nothing to complain about really. I feel for the folks out there who are not only in the “heat dome” but also in the fire zone. This shit is scary and if you can’t see this is a direct result of climate change and global warming then you might not be in the right place here.

Scary shit was when I read the computer models that predicted these exact conditions…in 2050!!

Without getting too depressing we’re fucked and I see no way to stop it now.

A great deal of my retirement planning has been centered around finding a place that won’t melt, burn up, have earthquakes or fucking drown over the next several decades. That eliminated a great many location options all by itself. Then you factor in that I WILL live in a location that has sane and well adjusted people with normal political outlooks and then you can tell about half of the U.S. to go fuck itself.

That goes double for you, Florida!

I shouldn’t be too obsessed over this shit, though because I’ve got several more years before retirement and I’ll probably be shot on the freeway anyway.

Let’s get to the fun stuff already.

Todays’ inspiration came, once again, from the Universal Yums, snack of the month booklet. This was from the South Korea box.

See? It’s right here on the inside of the guidebook.

Inspiration!

Well of course, we’ve explored the glorious foods of Korea before right here on Sunday Gravy but this one was new, slightly different and spoke right fucking to me.

Shit man, you can enlarge that photo and follow along with the recipe that way if you prefer.

Did y’all enjoy the South Korea Snax box? I sure did. Those churro things were straight up fucking nuts but the big winner for me were these little bastards.

Those were the Korean fried chicken snacks. Holy shit, people.

Sweet, a little spicy, crunchy. Incredible beer food.

These good folks know what the fuck they’re doing in the snack realm.

If you’ve had the opportunity to sample Korean food or to cook Korean food there is one characteristic you are very well aware of.

There will be garlic.

Another prominent food feature in Korean food is spice, sometimes enough spice to light your goddamn hair on fire.

The dish today, is “Soondubu” and according to the Yums book is a spicy tofu stew.

There are a couple of fun new ingredients to fuck around with today. First, I’ve never cooked with tofu. Love the stuff, especially in a savory miso broth but I just haven’t had the chance to prepare any prior to today.

Second ingredient is gochugaru or Korean red pepper flakes. A fiery chili powder that is used in a great many Korean dishes. 

Let’s say you were following the recipe in that guidebook photo, if you see the 4th ingredient listed it specifies “4 tbsp gochugaru.” Yes, that says 4 tablespoons. If you were to prepare the stew with these guidelines I cannot vouch for either your sanity or your continued existence because that shit is fucking hot as fuck!

I recognized the searing heat possibility and decided to dial it down a bit during my version.

I’ll give you the recipe as I prepared it.

Soondubu!

4 green onions sliced thin and separated into green parts and white parts

4 tablespoons of sesame oil

6 cloves of garlic  – minced

3 tablespoons of gochugaru  (and for you faint of heart, 2 tablespoons would be MORE than enough, trust me.)

 2 1/2 cups of water –  gonna go out on a limb here and say chicken stock would be an improvement over water.

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

2 tablespoons of fish sauce

1/2 pound of small cooked shrimp

1 14oz package of “silken” tofu – more on that later.

2 eggs.

Now that you’ve got your garlic ready to go, I guess you better get to mincing.

Get the green onions rinsed and give them a thin slicing.

Introducing our new player in the international spice game.

Gochugaru!

Once again it was Amazon to the rescue. I can’t wait to experiment with this shit. It’s not only got a scorching heat level, there’s a nice smoky undercurrent that I really dig.

This next ingredient we HAVE used multiple times.

Fish sauce! The brand and type that was selected was specific since it’s from Korea and we’re staying as authentic as we can.

Now to the more familiar ingredients.

Start with the sesame oil.

Yes, we did use this just recently when we made the Chinese style spareribs and fried rice.

The stew is going to be served over plain white rice. So I guess our asses better start…

Cooking some goddamn rice.

Standard 2:1 ratio today. Think I did 3/4 cup of rice and 1 1/2 half cups of water.

Time to check out our other new player in the game.

The different type of tofu include, soft, silken, firm, extra firm etc.

One thing to keep in mind is that all types of tofu are wet. No shit it’s wet, the tofu is soaking in liquid while packaged to keep from drying out. Before starting the stew you’re going to want to press out some of the water in the tofu.

Get creative here.

I placed the tofu on a paper towel then pressed a weighted plate on top to press out the water. Let this go for several minutes to drain the excess water.

Let’s get this party started!

In goes the sesame oil. Cook the stew in a medium sauce pan over a medium heat.

Grab yourself a couple of eggs and let them sit at room temperature for a bit.

Now let’s start by building that stew.

Add the lighter green onions, the garlic and the gochugaru to the pot then saute for 2-3 minutes.

Next add in the water, soy sauce and fish sauce and bring to a boil.

This dish can be a vegetarian dish by sticking with just the tofu but you can ratchet up the taste quotient by adding in some shrimp.

Get the shrimp into the sauce.

Get it to a steady simmer. A couple of minutes should do.

Time to get back to the tofu.

When the tofu has drained it will firm up a bit and look like this.

Using a kitchen knife cut it into sections.

Then into the pot it goes!

Bring to a boil and cook a minute or two. If you want smaller pieces of tofu use the back of the spoon and break it into smaller pieces.

We’re going to crack our eggs in the stew now. Think “poach” here. 

It’s almost go time folks.

You want the egg to be cooked but still a bit runny. I guess you could cook it fully through but don’t you want that delicious runny yolk to incorporate throughout the stew?

I sure as shit do.

Take a quick check on the rice.

Looks like rice alright.

Final check on the stew.

Looking pretty delicious there.

Plate it up!

A scoop of rice then the stew on top.

Get in close on that will ya’?

See the soft cooked egg there. Oh boy, oh boy! Finally sprinkle the diced green parts of the green onion right over the top for service.

Dive on in!

A couple of quick observations today. First observation is this fucker is HOT!!! Like dial down at least another tablespoon of gochugaru here. This stuff is fiery!

The shrimp were very much needed to give us the salty, briny taste. Now for the tofu, I think it would be better if a firmer tofu was used. The “silken” tofu was quite delicious but it had practically no chew to it. A firmer option would have given the stew a better overall texture.

Since there are so few ingredients in this stew it could be used as a base for a variety of additions. I think some shiitake mushrooms would be an excellent addition. Also, what if we added some slow roasted slices of pork belly here? Dear God that would be a great addition. Maybe add some ramen noodles. Shit there are just tons of possibilities.

I like this stew. A lot. It was great of the Universal Yums folks to include it in the guidebook but they really needed to add in some customization possibilities here. Missed a golden opportunity there.

Since I’ve still got all of the base ingredients around I may have to make a 2.0 version of this bastard.

Just a thought but that base broth deserves another go round.

You know what?

Hold my beer. 

I’ll be back with 2.0 in a couple of weeks. This is too good to leave it this lackluster. 

Stay cool out there people. It ain’t cooling off anytime soon.

Much love. 

Be well. 

Be safe. 

PEACE!