My Version of yangbaechu-doenjangguk

I will start by saying that I know very little when it comes to Korean food. I’m familiar with it and probably know more than many, but I don’t know the tradition. What I do know is that I love Korean food (most) and I love this dish and so did my wife and daughter.

I went googling for soup recipe and all i had was green cabbage (yangbaechu) and some other ingredients. So i searched “korean coup cabbage” and the top result was this recipe from www.maangchi.com. I adapted the recipe to my ingredients as well as to my own taste.

Note- Sorry I have no pictures. I published this only so I wouldn’t lose the recipe and I could practice my markdown.

My Variation

I wanted a bit more than just the cabbage in my soup so I added onion (regular old yellow onion - it’s what i had), shiitake mushrooms and tteok (rice cakes).

  1. In a bowl mix up the following into a paste for the soup base and set the paste aside.
    • 1/3 cup soybean paste (doenjang)
    • 1 tbsp gochujang
    • 2 tsp anchovy paste (i didn’t have dried anchovies, but is a wonderful substitution)
    • 2 tbsp flour
    • 1 tbsp of garlic (i’m lazy here so i use the pre chopped stuff from my local Korean market)
  2. In a large pan/saucepan
    • Blanch a head of cabbage and peel off the leaves until you get down to about a baseball size head (trash).
    • Cool the leaves in a bowl of ice water and set aside.
    • Try not to burn your fingers off as you pull the leaves of cabbage off the head.
    • Dump out the water and toss the baseball away (unless you want to make colcannan)
  3. in a saucepan, add the following
    • 2 16 oz cans of chicken stock
    • 2 cups of water (just cheat and use the 16oz can to measure the water.)
    • start bringing the saucepan to a boil
  4. finely shred 1/2 medium yellow onion (or whatever you want) and add it to the saucepan. if you’re using green onion here add it later so it maintains its texture.
    • Note - this is too thick - i cut my onions paper thin so they tend to blend right into the soup.
  5. Add about a 1/2 cup of dried shiitake mushrooms to the saucepan
  6. cut the cabbage into chunks around 1x2”, put in the pan
  7. mix in the soup base paste into the saucepan (no clumps)
    • i mix the broth into the bowl instead of vice versa then dump the whole lot into the pan once it’s smooth.
  8. sprinkle a tsp of pepper flakes (gochugaru) on top
  9. Bring to a boil on high heat for 20 minutes covered
  10. Reduce heat to a simmer
  11. add a handful of tteok (the rice cakes) - I really like these guys so feel free to add more but don’t overdo it.
  12. Simmer for 10 minutes