Chueotang

Whole small fish boiled soft and pushed through a sieve, bones and all, so the broth is made of the fish itself.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 800 g whole loach, or small whole river fish
• 3 tablespoons coarse salt, for cleaning
• 2 litres water
• 1 piece ginger, 5 cm, sliced
• 300 g napa cabbage leaves, blanched
• 200 g beansprouts, blanched
• 3 tablespoons doenjang
• 1 tablespoon gochugaru
• 8 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 tablespoons ground perilla seeds
• a handful of perilla leaves, shredded
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• sancho pepper or black pepper, at the table
• salt

Method

1. THE FISH ARE PUSHED THROUGH A SIEVE WHOLE, BONES AND ALL. Boiled until everything is soft, then worked through a coarse sieve with the back of a ladle -- flesh, skin, small bones and heads, all of it, with only the largest fragments left behind. That purée IS the broth; there is no stock in this dish other than the fish. Filleted first, or strained and the solids discarded, you have a thin fishy water and none of the thick, grey-brown, faintly muddy richness that is the whole character of it.
2. IT TAKES A COARSE SIEVE AND REAL EFFORT, ten minutes of pressing and scraping. A fine sieve blocks immediately; a blender is not the same thing, because it chops the bones into grit that stays in the soup rather than leaving it behind.
3. LOACH IS HARD TO BUY and the page says so. A Korean fishmonger may have them live or frozen; otherwise any small whole river fish will make the same dish, and this is one of the few places in the collection where a substitution is genuinely fine because the method is doing the work.
4. THEY ARE CLEANED WITH COARSE SALT, WHICH IS UNPLEASANT AND NECESSARY. Live or whole, tossed hard with three tablespoons of salt in a covered bowl and then rinsed through many changes of water until no slime remains. Skipped, the soup tastes muddy rather than earthy.
5. AND THE PERILLA SEED GOES IN AT THE END, as on the gamjatang page -- late, because long boiling turns it bitter, and it is not sesame.
6. Fish tossed hard with the coarse salt in a covered bowl, then rinsed through 4 or 5 changes of water until no slime comes away.
7. Put in a pot with the 2 litres of water and the ginger, brought to the boil, skimmed, and simmered 40 MINUTES until completely soft.
8. The ginger lifted out. The contents tipped into a COARSE sieve set over a bowl.
9. WORKED THROUGH with the back of a ladle, 10 minutes, pressing and scraping, until only coarse fragments remain. Those discarded.
10. The purée returned to the pot. The doenjang pressed through a small sieve into it, with the gochugaru and garlic.
11. The blanched cabbage and beansprouts chopped and added.
12. Simmered 20 MINUTES, stirred from the base, which will catch if it is left.
13. The ground perilla seed stirred in and cooked 5 MINUTES.
14. Tasted and salted. It should be thick enough to coat a spoon.
15. The perilla leaves and spring onions thrown on, and served very hot with sancho pepper at the table and steamed rice as on its own page.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes