Fish Cake Soup with Fried Tofu Pocket
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….This recipe is a Korean snack dish called Eomukguk. Eomuk are fish cakes and guk is the Korean word for soup, and this recipe is from my mother-in-law using special fried tofu pockets. I used a basic broth with anchovy, dried pollack, dried shiitake mushroom, and radish. I worked a long time to perfect this broth and make it as delicious as I could remember it being. 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. This soup goes well with any kind of spicy Korean dishes. My mother-in law also would add some fried tofu pockets with marinated glass noodles inside. My husband has a lot of memories of his mother’s dish while eating this soup. The fried tofu pocket filled with glass noodle is always so delicious in Eomukguk.
Servings: 4–6
Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Ingredients:
- 2000 ml anchovy broth
- 5 cups fish cakes(everyone chooses what they like), cut into small size or no cuts, blanched with hot water for 2 minutes
- 5 pieces of radish, trim the corners(prevents the broth from becoming thick)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 1/2 tbsp mixed fish sauce(gukganjang: fish sauce: tuna sauce= 1: 1: 1)
- alba mushroom for garnish
- crown daisy for garnish
- sea salt to taste
For fried tofu pocket:
- 4–5 fried tofu, cut into half
- 200 g beef, julienned
- 2 tsp garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp Mat-Gan-Jang
- 1/2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
- black pepper to taste
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 200 g dried sweet potato noodles
- 2–3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp avocado oil
- 2 stems green onion, minced
- 10–12 chives, parboiled
Cooking Instructions:
- Heat a pot with medium high heat and add 3 cups water to boil.
2. Parboil the chive into the pot for 30 seconds and remove the chive onto a tray to cool down.
3. Marinate the beef, garlic, Mat-Gan-Jang, sesame seeds, and black pepper into a tray to mix well. Set aside.
4. Heat a pot with medium high heat and add 3 cups water into the pot to boil.
5. Boil the dried sweet potato noodle into the pot for 3 minutes until cooked.
6. Sift the cooked noodle with a strainer.
7. Heat a pan with high heat and add the avocado oil into the pan.
8. Pan fry the marinated beef until cooked for 3 minutes.
9. Add the cooked sweet potato noodle into the pan to stir them well. Add the soy sauce into the noodle to mix well.
10. Add the green onion into the pan to mix well and turn off the heat. Set aside to cool down.
11. Put skewers into cold water for 3 hours(change water 2–3 times). It is to remove some impurities from the skewers.
12. Dry the skewers and keep them for using.
13. After cooling down the noodle, put the noodle inside a fried tofu pocket until 80% of the pocket is full and tie the opening of the pocket with a chive. Set aside.
14. Stick 5 or 6 blanched fish cake pieces on a skewer or whole fish cake on a skewer. Place them onto a tray.
15. Heat a pot with medium high heat and add the anchovy broth, radish, soy sauce, and mixed fish sauce into the pot to boil them for 3–4 minutes.
16. Remove any floating bubbles with a spoon.
17. Put the skewer fish cakes into the pot to totally submerge the fish cakes.
18. Heat down to medium heat and boil them 10 minutes. Add some sea salt if it is too bland.
19. After 10 minutes, add the pocket, mushrooms, and crown daisy into the pot to boil them more 5 minutes until the pockets are soft.
20. Prepare individual bowls and soy sauce with some mustard. Serve hot with some skewers into a bowl for each person.
You can also view this recipe on instagram.
