Taro Soup(Toran guk)
….Warm taro soup that always comes to mind when Chuseok approaches. My mother made this soup every year for Chuseok in Korea. Korean taro is very small in size. Peak season for taro in Korea is fall, so it’s customary to eat toran-guk during the Korean harvest festival of Chuseok. It tastes similar to a potato, but it’s sweeter and nuttier and kind of creamy like mashed potatoes. If you peel raw taro with your bare hands, they’ll get itchy afterwards for a while. So I recommend that you wear gloves when preparing them. I learned how to prepare taro soup from my mother 20 years ago. It contains a sticky juice, so you have to parboil them with some rice water before making the soup. After parboiling them, the stickiness is removed. This soup is made of beef broth and the taro is sweet and soft. The soup is really good and my family eats one bowl at a time. Happy Chuseok!!!
Servings: 8
Time: 50 minutes plus 2 hour for making beef broth
Ingredients:
- 7–8 cup taro(after peeling), peeled and parboiled with rice water
- 8 cup rice water
- 10 cup beef broth
- 4 stems green onion, sliced
- 2 Ts garlic, minced
- 1/4 onion, sliced
- 2 Ts gukganjang
- 1 Ts mixed fish sauce(gukganjang: fish sauce: tuna sauce= 1: 1: 1)
- black pepper to taste
- sea salt to taste
Cooking instructions:
- How to prepare the taro: Peel the taro(you wear gloves when preparing them).
2. Cut the taro into small size(trim the corners to clear the soup broth).
3. Heat a pot with medium high heat and add the rice water and taro into the pot to boil them for 5 minutes. Wash them with cold water once and set aside.
4. Heat a pot with high heat and add the beef broth into the pot to boil.
5. Add the gukganjang, mixed fish sauce, onion, parboiled taro, boiled beef, black pepper, and garlic into the pot to boil them for 5–7 minutes.
6. Add some sea salt if it is too bland and sprinkle some green onion into the pot. Turn off the heat.
7. Serve it with steamed rice.
You can also view this recipe on instagram.
