Hi everybody! I’m going to introduce you to the Korean snack Eomukguk today. Eomuk are fish cakes and guk is the Korean word for soup, so this recipe is fish cake soup with anchovy stock. If you’ve ever been to Korea, you’ve probably seen this food being sold by street vendors. You’ll always see people gathering around their steaming carts in the wintertime, enjoying the sizzling eomukguk.
Many of these street carts are also selling ddukbokkie, which is hot and spicy, so this soup goes well with it. After having some ddukbokkie many people like to chase it down with some eomukguk broth. I have a lot of memories of standing around the street cart, enjoying the fish cakes. In my video I put many cakes on a single skewer, but vendors sell them one cake per skewer. Eat as many as you like, and when you’re finished, the vendor will ask you:
“How many did you eat?”
For each one I ate, I’ll have an empty skewer in my hand. So it’s easy to calculate! I show the vendor my skewers and they tell me the price. This way, I can just eat as many as I like, comfortably, and worry about paying later.
What I’m showing you here is an upgraded version of Eomukguk. Most street carts only use low quality fish cake made with lots of starch instead of fish, but I’m using gourmet fish cakes in this video. I worked a long time to perfect this broth and make it as delicious as I could remember it being. I tried adding dried shrimp, mussels, dried mushrooms, but found that a simple, well-seasoned broth gave me the best flavor. If I ever develop a better broth I’ll let you know, but in the meantime, make this for your family, friends, or yourself, and pretend you’re on the street in Korea.
Ingredients
for broth:
for yangnyeomjang (dipping sauce):
Directions
Make the broth:
- Put the water in a large pot. Peel the radish and cut it into 1 inch cubes (or balls) and put them into a soup strainer (gukmulmang). Put the strainer into the pot. If you don’t have a soup strainer, you can use soup sock or cheese cloth.
- Add the the onion, dried kelp, and the leftover bits of radish (including the skin) to the pot. Bring it to a boil over high heat for 20 minutes with the lid closed.
- While it’s boiling, cook the anchovies in the microwave for 1 minute (or sauté without oil in a pan for a few minutes).
- Add the dried anchovies to the pot and boil for another for 20 minutes, uncovered. This will allow some of the fishy smell of the anchovies to evaporate.
- Remove the pot from the heat and strain. Take out the cooked radish cubes from the soup strainer and set aside. You’ll get about 8 cups of stock. Add the soy sauce and salt and mix well.
Add the fish cakes:
- Stick 5 or 6 fishcake pieces on a skewer, and make 4 or 5 skewers. Put them in a shallow pot and add enough broth to totally submerge the fishcakes.
- Bring to a boil for 10 to 15 minutes until the fishcakes are soft.
Make the yangnyeomjang (dipping sauce):
- Combine soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, green onion, green chili pepper, garlic, sugar, toasted sesame oil, and sesame seeds in a small mixing bowl.
Serve:
- Prepare individual bowls and plates, a ladle for the soup, and a small spoon for the dipping sauce. Serve hot and scoop some of the soup, with a skewer, into a bowl for each person. When they eat a fish cake from the skewer they can put some dipping sauce on it first. Delicious!
Enjoy the recipe! Let me know how it turns out.
Posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 4:34 pm.
Last updated on October 5, 2014.
Tagged: eomook, eomuk, fish cake soup, fishcake skewers, fishcakes, 오뎅국, 어묵, 어묵국, korean food, Korean style oden, Koreans street snack, Maangchi recipes, oden
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Anyone else end up with just more than a cup of stock? I’m having to reboil the ingredients to hopefully make more, but I started with 12cups, might’ve gotten two? I’m from Connecticut and it’s the summer, so maybe those are my issues? If anyone else had this problem did you just add more water to begin with? Say 20cups?
First attempt. Burned my mouth eating the fish cakes but totally worth it
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An older post but it looks delicious depending on the quality of Fish Cakes.
Any chance I could get you to guess on the WEIGHT OF 20 LARGE ANCHOVIES?
They are so varied in size. The ones I have in the fridge now are about 1 1/4 inches long, and I have no idea how many ounces 20 large ones would weigh.
I do have shaved Bonita Flakes if that would be easier to figure. How many grams of Bonita Flakes would go into 12 cups of water to make a similar strength broth?
Thanks. Love your You Tube videos and always let the commercials play all the way so you get the income. Also a subscriber on You Tube.
I just measured my anchovies. They are about 1 ounce, and the anchovies should be at least 2 and a half inches long to 3 and a half.
Maangchi – So cool you answered me. And such a perfect answer. It is so easy to figure out ingredients when weights are given. i see so many recipes from other countries where they specify something small, medium, or large. And often, they are so different in size in different countries, Even between California and Canada, a large Grapefruit in California is TWICE the size of a large one there. They just don’t ship the giants up north. The pinks I have in the kitchen now are the size of large Cantaloupes. There, now I’m doing it. I think a “large cabbage” in Poland or Russia is infinitely larger than those grown commercially grown in the States. Hope I have made my point, As said, love your recipes and your presentation of them. You make them “easy to follow and replicate”,
It was cold, yesterday so i made my soup after looking at the video i couldn’t resist and i don’t regret it , it was really good :p
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Great!
Hi Maangchi,
Why do you microwave the anchovies in this recipe? In some of your other soup or stew recipes, you just put the anchovies straight in to boil with the kelp. I don’t have a microwave – is there a big difference?
Hi, Maangchi! Can I use salted kelp? Coz I can’t find any dried kelp so I just bought it. Thank you!
No, you need to use dried kelp. If you can’t find it, skip it. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredient/kelp
Alright, also can you recommend a recipe using salted kelp? Thank yousm!
Check out my miyeok-julgi-bokkeum recipe. https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/miyeok-julgi-bokkeum Miyeok and kelp are different seaweeds but you can follow the recipe. If the salted kelp is not shredded but wide, rinse it in cold water to remove saltiness, then blanch it in boiling water and rinse it in cold water again. Then make Yangnyeomchojang and wrap some rice with it. The recipe for Yangnyeomchojang (sweet, spicy, and salty sauce) is in my raw fish bibimbap recipe here.
Okay, thank you Maangchi.. I cant wait to make this for my family.
Can I skip the kelp?
Yes, you can.
Thank you for your feedback….:-)
Hello Maangchi: could you show me how to make “doenjang”?