ADVENTURES IN DOMESTICITY: Korean Chicken Stew

The spate of Korean cooking continues in my kitchen. What can I say? I love the cuisine. This time around, my friend Bets joined in on the fun, and after perusing through my cookbook, we decided upon an intriguing chicken stew of sorts — one that looked both delicious and easy (two of my favorite words). After a jaunt to the Korean supermarket (with a side trip to a dumpling spot to temporarily sate our hunger), we returned to my abode and began the cooking process. Results after the jump.

Things begin simply enough with some water and soy sauce in the ol’ dutch oven.

Here I am judiciously measuring out some mirin.

The cooking wine goes into the pot, creating a cool swirling pattern in the liquid. If we were high, it would have been awesome.

Bets gets to work on the sweet potato vermicelli, which is shockingly difficult to break apart.

Success, finally.

The vermicelli goes into a bowl of water, but obviously we have some logistics to work out. Shears are soon employed.

Good old fashioned fun with the garlic press.

Also going into the pot is red pepper powder, hot pepper paste, and sugar.

A few potatoes keep things interesting.

Lastly, we need a pound and a half of chicken, which I happily chop up into bite sizes.

And in goes the bird. The pot is then covered and the mixture boils for twenty minutes on high.

In the meantime, Bets goes on veggie chopping duty. Here are some scallions being put to good use.

Also getting the royal treatment are a red bell pepper, onions, and a carrot — all being chopped in large sizes, in accordance with the demonstration in the book.

Eventually a jalapeño pepper, some enoki mushrooms, and a touch of spinach enter the mix as well.

After twenty minutes, it’s time to return to the pot.

In go all the veggies, save for the mushrooms and spinach. Some corn syrup enters the equation also.

It’s a whole lot of veggies, and not a lot of broth. We resolve the situation by adding more water and soy sauce. And a touch of mirin.

Five minutes later, and the veggies have tenderized quite a bit.

We add the spinach and the vermicelli and cover up again.

Two minutes later, the stew is done.

We plate up two bowls of stew, garnishing with the mushrooms and sesame seeds. Sadly, I did not have any matching bowls left. How gauche.

The verdict? Very good. Not amazing. Well, not amazing yet. Bets and I both agreed that the broth felt a bit under-seasoned. We added a healthy dose of soy sauce to each of our bowls, and that did the trick. Suddenly the stew became totally awesome. Truth be told, this was a very American-style dish. The vegetables — pepper, carrot, onion, spinach, scallions — were not exotic at all, and their flavor profile felt reminiscent of most vegetable soups or braises. Really, the only place the stew felt more typically Korean was in the broth, which was so very very good — sweet, salty, spicy. It was everything you’d want out of Korean food. Oh, and let’s not overlook the chicken which was out of control amazing. That meat soaked up all the ingredients of the pot, resulting in juicy, succulent, and immensely flavorful bites each time.
If I were to make this dish again (and I most certainly will), I would change a few key elements. First, I would chop the veggies smaller. The giant pieces of onion and pepper were a bit cumbersome. A normal dice would be perfectly fine. Also, the recipe calls for sweet potato vermicelli, which was lovely, but Bets and I didn’t taste enough of a difference to justify a repeat trip all the way to the Korean grocer just for this special noodle. Any vermicelli should be fine.
Lastly, I would add significantly more liquid to the pot. Maybe it’s because my dutch oven is particularly wide, but a lot of the broth evaporated out, leaving us with mostly vegetables. Don’t get me wrong — there was liquid, but we were expecting significantly more. No problem though. In fact, when I reheated leftovers in my saucepan two days later, I added a lot more water, soy sauce, and mirin to make the dish a bit more soupy. Then, then it was perfect. And I should note that after two days, all the ingredients were totally delicious.
Another win for the cookbook!