Today’s recipe is a sweet, sour, and spicy mushroom dish with water dropwort, called Beoseot minari chomuchim. It’s a variation of a popular traditional Korean dish that’s prepared the same way but uses squid instead of mushrooms (called ojingeo minari chomuchim), and something I came up with in my hotel room in Sydney, Australia during my Gapshida tour. I was making the squid version to bring to the Sydney readers’ meetup & potluck, and quickly whipped up this vegetarian alternative in case some people didn’t like squid.

To my surprise, most of the people at the party preferred my mushroom version to the original! I promised them I would post the recipe someday, and here it is!

I use king oyster mushrooms in this version, but you could use other mushrooms, too. Blanched mushrooms go well with water dropwort, the textures of each play off each other and both are awesome with this Korean-style sweet, sour, and spicy sauce. Water dropwort (called minari in Korean) can be hard to find, so you can substitute it with parsley leaves, or even basil leaves.

Enjoy the recipe and hello Australia! This is for you!

Ingredients

Serves 4 to 6

Directions

Prepare vegetables

  1. Combine cucumber, carrot, and onion in a bowl and mix with ½ teaspoon kosher salt.
    beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)
  2. Bring water to a boil in a pot. Blanch the mushrooms for 1 minute, then strain them with a strainer or a slotted spoon. Rinse them  in cold water. Drain and squeeze to remove excess water. Put them in a mixing bowl.
  3. Reheat the water and blanch minari (water dropwort) for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Strain and rinse in cold water a couple of times, changing the water to clean them and to stop them from cooking. Squeeze out the excess water. Chop them into bite size pieces. Add to the mixing bowl.
    beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)
  4. Squeeze out the excess water from the cucumber, carrot, and onion mixture and put it into the mixing bowl.
    beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)

Make seasoning sauce

  1. Combine hot pepper paste, hot pepper flakes, garlic, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, honey, vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and green onion in a bowl. Mix well and add to the vegetables in the mixing bowl.beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)
  2. Add green chili pepper and mix well by hand or a wooden spoon.
    beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)beoseot minari chomuchim (Sweet sour spicy mushrooms and water dropwort: 버섯미나리 초무침)

Serve

Transfer to a serving plate. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve right away with rice. Leftovers can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

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9 Comments:

  1. Ellie.n_16 Chicago, Illinois joined 10/21 & has 1 comment

    Hi Maangchi!

    I don’t have any minari in my area, will it still taste good if I opted it and use the rest of the ingredients? Or what other ingredient can I use to substitute it?

  2. drbobl California joined 9/14 & has 4 comments

    Hi Maangchi,

    If I wanted to use squid in this recipe, what should I do differently, how is the squid prepared?

    Thanks you, drbobl

  3. luludecow Singapore joined 9/14 & has 1 comment

    Hi Maangchi,
    I bought corn syrup for making ojingeojeot and still have lots of syrup left. Can I use rice syrup instead of the honey and how much?

  4. sanne Munich joined 8/14 & has 309 comments

    Hi Maangchi!

    You can easily grow your own minari by putting the parts of the stems you can’t eat into a shallow basin filled with water. As long as there are any nodes left at the stems, they will grow!
    Hint: To avoid mosquitos, put a drop of liquid soap into the water.

    Bye, sanne.

  5. Patejl Prague joined 8/14 & has 1 comment

    This looks well. But these mushrooms are very rare in my country and i can’t buy them here.
    Can I use usual oyster, some kind of bolete or some other kind of mushroom?

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