I’ll be back soon, my darlings, soon
Yeesh, talk about an overdue post - this one is a few weeks in the making! About a week and a half ago I received an email from a reader asking if I had a recipe for a particular Korean dish called ‘soon doo boo jji gae‘ - a spicy stew that is made with soft silken tofu to create a deliciously refreshing broth. Not a difficult request, as we’d just made it the week before and I’d photographed it to have it ready to go, but having been ill these past few weeks, my good intentions to have it posted up ASAP fell by the wayside.
Kids, if you haven’t learnt by now, let me tell you again - smoking is bad for your health. Not only in the ways it directly affects your body, but in a multitude of secondary effects as well. Am trying my darndest to quit, down to 1-2 cigs a day and I’m confident that once I finish my study, I’ll be able to give the little fuckers up for good…
Anyway, back to the food!
‘Jji-gae‘ is a word used to describe a particular kind of broth that I can’t quite find a replacement for in English. Unlike your typical soups and broths, a jji-gae is often quite intense in flavour, and not designed to be eaten solely on its own, but as an accompaniment to a bowl of rice and banchan (side dishes). Unlike ‘gook’ (soup), it is traditionally made in a small, heavy stone pot, and each portion is usually quite small and served alongside the rice, and instead of mixing the rice into the dish, is eaten by the spoonful after a mouthful of rice to help ‘wet’ the throat. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, just the most common way of eating it 
Now, the main component of this dish is silken tofu, but you must be careful when purchasing the tofu to use here as it comes in a range of consistencies. Firstly, be sure that it is silken tofu that you’re purchasing, and not regular or strained/firm tofu as they are very different in texture and not used interchangeably. Silken tofu has a much softer and creamier mouthfeel than other varieties, though this will vary according to the firmness of the silken tofu which is purchased.
For use in this dish, try and buy the silken tofu in a tub from a Chinese/Korean grocery store - I’m yet to see this particular kind of tofu stocked outside of Asian grocery stores, and the firmer pressed silken tofu in vaccuum-sealed packages available at supermarkets will not work. What you want is a tofu which almost has no structural integrity of its own - the right kind will wobble like barely-set jello, and when you cut into it with a spoon, will have next to no resistance.
Once you have acquired your ‘soon doo boo‘ (Korean word for this type of silken tofu) and have your gochugaru (ground red pepper) ready, you’re pretty much ready to go
Oh, and one final note - other than the inclusion of the tofu and ground red pepper, you can do pretty much anything to this dish, so it can easily be altered according to tastes - vegetarian/vegan/seafood/meats, anything is possible here
Soon Doo Boo Jji-gae
(Spicy Silken Tofu Stew)
Ingredients
Approx 150g protein*
1/2 tsp sesame oil
500-600g soft silken tofu
1/2 - 3/4 cup water (depending on how watery you want it)
Yang Yohm Jjang
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sesame seeds
2-3 cloves crushed garlic
1 spring onion, washed and sliced
1 tbsp gochugaru (ground red pepper)
Proteins:
Now, depending on what protein you’ll be using in addition to the tofu in the dish, the ingredients and preparation can vary at this point, so I’ve added this as a separate table:
| Seafood | Beef/Pork | Mushrooms |
|
Mix everything together and proceed |
Mix together the gochugaru, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil then massage well into the meat. |
Mix everything together and proceed |
1. Preheat a high-sided pot (great if you have the traditional stoneware but don’t worry if you don’t!) over medium heat and add a little (about 1/2 tsp) sesame oil and allow it to heat up. Add the prepared protein of your choice (though I’ve listed them all seperately, there’s no reason you can’t mix and match as you wish, just restrain yourself from adding too much as the main component of this dish *is* the tofu) and saute till your protein is about half-cooked.
2. Add between 1/2 cup and 3/4 cup of water (depending on how watery you want it) to the pot and bring it to the boil. Once it is bubbling, use a tablespoon to carefully spoon the tofu onto the top of the mixture. Lower the heat to about low-medium and slowly bring to the boil with the lid on, leaving it for about 30-45 minutes or till the tofu has cooked through.
3. At this point, you can give it a taste and add more gochugaru, salt, crushed garlic and sliced spring onion to taste, mixing it in before serving, or you can follow the traditional method of creating a mixture known as ‘yahng yomh jjang’, a flavouring mix which is served alongside the broth, allowing each eater to add more season to their own tastes.
To make the yang yohm jjang, mix together all the listed ingredients, then place in a small sauce bowl to be served next to the stew
4. Serve this while piping hot, either in the stone bowl or pot, or spooned into seperate serving bowls, alongside bowls of rice and banchan For a great hangover ‘cure’, once this has been removed from the heat, immediately crack open and add a fresh, raw egg, stirring it in!
Technorati Tags: soup, broth, Korean cuisine, recipes, traditional, Asian, silken tofu
EDIT: Also, if there are any people out there who are CSS gurus and have ample time on their hands and feel like giving me a hand with something, could you drop me a line? I’m sure we could work out some sort of edible payment for services rendered 
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Comments
Mandy I need to get the gochugaru and I am all set to make this recipe. Thanks Ellie for the wonderful recipe, and I look forward to seeing more korean recipes here :)*excited*
Ellie Kat - Absolutely This is a great dish for the colder months
Mandy - My pleasure Hope you like it
Claire N - Thanks hon I’m hoping like heck it does!
Mango Power Girl thanks for all the options…now this sounds like comfort on a cold rainy day to me - perfect for where i live! and, good luck to quit smoking…hope you are down to zer0 soooon!
Ellie Mango Power Girl - Cheers hon And yeah, hopefully I’ll be down to 0 by the end of the day!
Kimberly Yum! This was one one of my staple dishes when I lived in Korea and I’m excited to eat it again! Thank you. Great website.
Chelsea My husband and I weren’t too impressed with this. He was very excited when I said that I was going to make it for dinner tonight, but I made our version with pork, and the 2 teaspoons of gochugaru were too much. He kept coughing on it, and I couldn’t eat anything but the dubu. And the seasoning was just not great, because after you get past the gochugaru, it tasted watery.
I followed the meat section to a tee, and then I didn’t make the yang Yohm Jang, I just added one chopped spring onion, some minced garlic, and 1 tablespoon of soysauce to the soup before I served it. Any suggestions? Can I use gochujang to season the soup instead?
Ellie Chelsea, I’m sorry to hear that you weren’t impressed with this, but that can happen - all the Korean recipes here are as *my* family enjoy them, this doesn’t guarantee that yours necessarily will. If you don’t intend on making the yahngyomjjang, then according to the amount of water you use in the broth, you’ll need to work most of the ingredients in during the cooking process in order to get more flavour.
Chelsea Okay, Thank you. Since I’m still learning to cook I wasn’t sure when to put the soy sauce and other seasonings in. :p I asked my husband about the Yahngyoumjjang and he said that he never remembered it being on the side, so he’d just put it in the soup. He’s not the cook in the household by any means, so I figured I should put those ingredients in at the end, like you would if you put it into your own soup to taste. I guess I’ll have to try it out again, adding them in earlier so they can simmer!
this will be perfect once the weather gets cooler here!