Cooking Korean food with Maangchi

• English name/description: Spicy fish soup
• Korean: 매운탕
• Romanized Korean: Maeuntang (or maeun-tang)
• Wikipedia entry for this recipe
• Music: 'Foundations' - Kate Nash
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• Posted in: main dishes | seafood | soups

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!

1. Soak 2 shiitake mushrooms in warm water for 3-4 hours and cut them into bite size in length.
2. 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.
3. Cut  radish thinly into about 3×4 cm size, 0.2-0.3 cm in thickness.
4. Place the sliced radish (about 1 cup), the pieces of mushroom, and some kelp in a pot.
5. Pour 6-7 cups of water into the pot and boil it over high heat for 20 minutes.

Make maeuntang sauce:

1. 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.
2. Set it aside.

Prepare  fish:

1. 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
2. Prepare 4 large shrimp: remove the heads and intestines, wash them, and set aside.

Prepare vegetables:

1. Clean ssukgat (edible chrysanthemum) and cut it into 7 cm long pieces.
2. Clean minari (water dropwort) and cut it into 7 cm long pieces.
3. Cut out the bottom part of enoki mushrooms and wash and split them.
4. Slice some green onions, 1 green chili pepper, 1 red chili pepper,
5. After boiling stock for 20 minutes, open the lid of the pot and take out kelp.
6. Place chunks of the fish, shrimp, clams in the boiling stock.
7. 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
8. 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.

Posted Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Categories: main dishes | seafood | soups