Health benefits of Miyeok Guk 미역국

Miyeok Guk 미역국 is a soup made with dried brown seaweed (Miyeok). In Korean culture it’s traditionally associated with birth. It helps to clean blood vessels and to produce milk, contains abundant iodine to reduce the swollen body and calcium to help build strong bones, that’s why women who delivered a child eat this soup for weeks to recover. Due to its symbolic association with birth, Miyeok Guk is also consumed on birthdays as a reminder of the first food that the mother has eaten and passed on to her newborn through her milk. It’s very easy to make and you can have it ready in less than 30 minutes.

Ingredients:
1 package of dried seaweed,
100 g of beef,
2 teaspoons of sesame oil,
1 1/2 tablespoons of soy sauce,
1 teaspoon of salt,
6 cups of water,
1 teaspoon of minced garlic.

Soak the seaweed on cold water for 5 minutes. When it gets soft, rinse the seaweed a couple of times in running water, drain and cut into bite sizes.

Heat a pan, add beef, sesame oil, 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce and a pinch of salt. Cook it for 1 minutes. Stir in seaweed and the rest of soy sauce. Cook for another 1 minute.

Pour in 2 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Add garlic and remaining 4 cups of water. Lower the heat and boil for 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

A love affair with dumplings, that is Manduguk 만두국 the Polish way

Cooking Korean dishes in Poland is a challenge. When I decided to make a culinary entry as my first post, I was full of optimism. My leitmotiv for the post turned out to be a Korean Buddhist temple cuisine, but while browsing the recipes and making notes (which took me over 3 hours), I realized I can prepare no more than two small dishes. I visited the nearest Asian grocery store and it confirmed me in the belief there’s no sense for me to even think about temple cuisine. There were no lotus leaves, no jujube fruits, no required herbs. And this is not the end of complaining! No cellophane noodles, no soybean paste, no nothing. That’s why for someone living in Poland Korean cuisine is an adventure. But let’s stay optimistic and try to make all those fantastic Korean dishes with ingredients that we can get.

Mandu 만두 means dumpling in Korean, guk 국 in this case refers to a watery, soup-like dish. We could say then that Manduguk 만두국 is nothing else than a dumpling soup. According to history, mandu were brought to Korea in 14th century during the Goryeo Dynasty, but historians don’t exclude the possibility that they came to Korea at a much earlier period.

I found few very similar recipes differing from each other with one or two ingredients, so I’m going to combine them to get the most tasty flavor. Let’s start with the ingredients for 2 people:

Mandu filling:
a package of mandu skins,
200 g of ground beef,
chives,
5 soaked shiitake mushrooms,
half an onion,
1/2 package of tofu,
3 cloves of minced garlic,
salt, sugar, ground pepper,
sesame oil,
vegetable oil,
soy sauce.

A package of mandu skins I got is actually a package of wonton skins, but the ingredients are the same. It’s the only type they got in the nearby Asian grocery store. It counts 35 skins and they can be used both for boiled and for fried dumplings. You can easily make it by yourself by mixing flour with water and rolling it into a dough. The dough should be thinly shaved into circles. Unfortunately, the wonton skins are square shaped, but let’s make the dumplings this way.

First you need to put the ground beef into a bowl and mix it with 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil and 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper. Chop the chives, add 1 tablespoon of oil, mix it well and put it into a big bowl right next to the ground beef. Chop 5 soaked shiitake mushrooms and half an onion and put them into a different bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of sugar and 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, mix it well with your hand and put into the main bowl. Squeeze the tofu, preferably through a cotton cloth, and place it into a small bowl. Add a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, mix it well and put it into the main bowl. Add 3 cloves of minced garlic and mix all ingredients by hand. Now put some filling on the center of the mandu skin, put a little cold water on the half of the edge of the skin, fold skin in half and press edges together.

Now when you have mandus ready, it’s time to make Manduguk. Ingredients as follows:

4 cups of soup stock,
2 green onions,
2 tablespoons of clear soy sauce,
1 teaspoon of salt,
a dash of black pepper,
an egg.

Put soup stock into a pot, bring it to boil, add sliced onions and dumplings. Let it boil until the dumplings start floating – it should take not longer than 3 minutes. Add soy sauce, black pepper and some salt if needed. At the end add a beaten egg. Your Manduguk is ready.

You probably have some mandus left that you couldn’t fit into a pot. Don’t throw them away, neither freeze for later. Put some vegetable oil on heated pan and place the dumplings. Turn over each mandu after few minutes or the moment you see they’re ready on one side. When they’re golden brown, turn off the heat and put them on a plate. It’s good to serve fried mandus with a dipping sauce, so let’s make the one I found in some cooking book:

1/4 cup of soy sauce,
1/2 teaspoon of rice vinegar,
1/2 teaspoon of grilled sesame seeds.

Since I love sesame seeds, I added a lot more than just a half of a teaspoon. Okay, the meal is ready, although I might have overcooked the mandus a little bit 😉