4 servings. Total cooking hours: 1-1½ hours.
Ingredients:
a red snapper (25 cm long), 4 clams, 4 large shrimp, Korean radish, 2 shiitake mushrooms, water, kelp, fish sauce, salt, minari (water dropwort), enoki mushroom, ssukgat (edible chrysanthemum), green onions, green chili pepper, red chili pepper, half an onion, cooking wine, ginger.
Make stock first!
- Soak 2 shiitake mushrooms in warm water for 3-4 hours and cut them into bite size in length.
- Soak 4-5 clams in cold salty water (2 cups of cold water +1 tbs salt) for at least 3-4 hours and wash them and set them aside.
- Cut radish thinly into about 3×4 cm size, 0.2-0.3 cm in thickness.
- Place the sliced radish (about 1 cup), the pieces of mushroom, and some kelp in a pot.
- Pour 6-7 cups of water into the pot and boil it over high heat for 20 minutes.
Make maeuntang sauce:
- Place 7 cloves galic, ½ medium size onion, ½ tbs ginger, 2 tbs cooking wine (or soju), 2 tbs hot pepper flakes, 1 tbs hot pepper paste, 2 tbs fish sauce in the food processor and grind it for about 1 minute.
- Set it aside.

Prepare fish:
- Put a red snapper on a cutting board and clean out guts, remove scales and fins. Wash it in cold water, cut it into chunks, and set it aside.
*tip: to save time, you can ask your fishmonger to do this for you - Prepare 4 large shrimp: remove the heads and intestines, wash them, and set aside.
Prepare vegetables:
- Clean ssukgat (edible chrysanthemum) and cut it into 7 cm long pieces.
- Clean minari (water dropwort) and cut it into 7 cm long pieces.
- Cut out the bottom part of enoki mushrooms and wash and split them.
- Slice some green onions, 1 green chili pepper, 1 red chili pepper,
- After boiling stock for 20 minutes, open the lid of the pot and take out kelp.
- Place chunks of the fish, shrimp, clams in the boiling stock.
- Add the maeuntang hot sauce and boil it all over medium heat for 30 minutes.
*tip: It might boil over from time to time. Open the lid and remove the floating foam from the top and then close the lid halfway - Add ½ ts of salt, enoki mushrooms, minari (water dropwort) and ssukgat (garland chrysanthemum), green chili pepper, red chili pepper, and boil a few more minutes before serving.
Your maeuntang is done!
Serving:
Put some fish soup in a bowl for each person and provide each person with a bowl to collect fish bones and serve with rice and other side dishes.









































































Hi Maangchi!
I made this a couple of weeks ago from your recipe – its absolutely delish! kamsahamnida =)
yay! congratulation on your success! You are living in Missisauga! I have a few friends living there! Nice meeting you through my website!
nice to meet you too maangchi, i hope we can be friends too. maybe we can exchange email addresses =)
I was unsure of what cooking wine is, so found this link:
http://whatscookingamerica.net/WineInCooking.htm
It suggests not to use cooking wine, but rather always use a wine you would drink. I’d be interested in your opinion:)
sorry, I don’t know much about wine. : )
Hi I really like your recipes. Their so simple easy to cook. I cook your spicy fish soup for my husband it was good.(little spicy for us)
Thank you very much.
oh, you made maeuntang! I feel like making it for myself. : )
Hi Maangchi, I live 4 blocks from a Korean Market and I made this today because it is my favorite Korean Dish. Your recipe is better than the restaurants. I can’t believe it turned out so good. Love the video. Hope I can meet Mila also, best wishes!!
very nice! I like to taste your maeuntang! : ) oh, I should contact Mila and let her know she has a fan!
There is a soup I always get with my auntie in south Los Angeles that looks like the soft tofu soup, but has some kind of white fish cut crosswise with mussels and clams, is this the same as maeuntang or what seafood soup would it be?
yes, it’s maewoontang made with the white fish (cod or pollack?) and clams.
Hi Maangchi, I was wondering if redsnapper is the traditional fish used in this stew. Is there an alternative to cod and snapper? My wife made this out of rainbow trout and it wasn’t very well received.
You could replace red snapper with other kinds of fish except for cod. : ) Cod flesh is so soft that it’s easily broken when you boil it. The recipe for cod maewoontang is different from red snapper maewoontang.
You could use a croaker, flounder,or flatfish instead of red snapper for this recipe. Good luck with making delicious maewoontang!
Thanks very much! I will try to make it as surprise for my wife.
thanks for this website
Welcome!!
annyeong maangchi
i bought this bottle of wine(i think) and it says 백세주
and i was wondering if i could use it here.
and if not wat are other uses for baek se ju
thanks!
cant wait for your future recipes ^o^
Baekseju (백세주)! Sure, you could use it.
Thanks!
Hey Maangchi
I was wondering, when you soaked the clams overnight did you leave it out or put it in the fridge? Also Do you have a substitute for kelp?
Put it in the fridge.
Hi Maangachi unni ^^
I was wondering if the fish could be substituted for a crab (i like your recipe for the broth..!) and would it be close to an authentic ggot gae tang (crab soup)? Or..would that not taste right?
Any suggestions would be great too!
You can use crabs, but authentic ggotgaetang (crab stew) recipe is a little different from fish maewoontang. I will post the recipe later. Thanks!
Hi Maangchi,
I was wondering is tofu the major difference between SoonDubu and Maeun-tang? Thanks, -BenbimBahp
for soondubu jjigae, you will have to use soft tofu called soondubu http://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/soon-du-bu
And for maeun tang (spicy fish stew), plain tofu (for stew) is used.
ken,
oh, you are in Singapore. Did you check the forum “where do you get Korean ingredients” section? I’m copying and pasting it here:
I found some Korean grocery stores in Singapore on the internet
1. Korean mart:
20 North Canal Road Tel: 6538-9801
2. Korean trading mart:
163 Tras Street #01-01 (LianHuat Building)
Tel: 6324-5016
or 6324-5017
3. Samjin store:
37 Malan Road Tel: 6777-4988
These all 3 stores say that they can provide delivery service
o thanks for the reply.. i replaced the pepper flakes to paste and it turns out nice.
i got another question for you, i am now in singapore and cant find the vegetable in your recipe here in singapore. if it can be found than where can i find it, if not than do you have any other types of vegetable to substitute that i can find in singapore?
ken,
Yes, you can,
hi if i cant get pepper flakes can i just add extra pepper paste for the sauce?
i love the way you cook easy but very delicious
rona,
yes, you can. Thank you!
hi can i use this recipe and cooking procedure also for hemultang??
hi, i am very fond of korean food, i looked every item of cooking and i enjoy with you. thankyou
Luna,
Yes, you can use prawns instead of shrimp.
Chinese black mushroom? I don’t know what it is. Find shiitake mushrooms! : ) Shiitake mushrooms are used for good stock.
hey maangchi can i use prawns instead of shrimps and
chinese black mushroom instead of shittake?
I made Maeuntang today. I added some Dashi Moto Stock to it. It added some more seafood flavor and turned out great. You can get the Dashi powder in any asian super market. I can highly recommend it. My Korean father-in- law and my husband loved it!! He said ‘chin-cha Maeuntang!’
Luna,
check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeuntang
daikon radish will be good, but don’t use kim for soup.
cindy,
you could use dried anchovy, too
hey can i use dried anchovy fish at place of kelp?
Maangchi
can i use daikon radish instead of korean and can i use Kim(laver) instead of Kelp
Maangchi,
This soup looks so good, I cannot wait to try it! Can you substitute the snapper with any type of fish? Also, your kitchen looks so nice!
Sujin,
Yes, you could replace snapper with cod.
Sylvia,
Yes, a few scallops, why not! : )
Now I am really hungry for spicy seafood soup.
Thank you for another great recipe and fun video.
Is it ok to add a couple of scallops?
Thank you for your wonderful videos!
I was wondering if I could substitute the snapper with cod (daegue).