Where have all the flowers gone?

Dduk!
Dduk!
Dduk!

Happy New Year!

Better late than never. Been doing a lot of eating, but not enough posting.

For New Year's, I went to my Uncle's house to seh beh and the traditional dduk gook (rice cake soup).


A picture of my plate. The kimchi was especially delicious. My aunt also made galbi jjeem (like a Korean style pot roast) but no picture, sorry.


Traditional dduk gook.

I love dduk gook. It doesn't have to be New Year's to have this, but I only eat this occasionally. So I decided to give it a shot myself.


What you'll need: I believe this was flank. I got a pound of it. My grandma, who was a great cook, said that sirloin is better, so I'm going to try that next time.

Soak the meat in water for 30 minutes to get rid of some of the blood. It'll give a clearer broth.


In a pot, I put in 5 cloves of garlic, half an onion, the meat, and 9 cups of water. Cook on low heat for a couple hours (I did 3 hours). You can also use anchovies for the broth, and I've even read some people using chicken broth.


This is what it looked like afterwards. You will probably want to skim off some of the fat that rises. At this point in time, the meat will be so soft that you can break it apart with your hands. No need to use a knife. I put half in the soup and gave the other half to my doggy.


While that's going on, buy a bag of sliced dduk (rice cake ovalettes) and soak em in cold water for about an hour. Then dump them into the broth, along with some more sliced onion and green onions. You gotta also have eggs, which you can do two ways: Either take a few eggs, make a sort of crepe, slice em up and serve on top of the soup after ladled, or beat a few eggs and stir them in the soup. It's your own preference. My aunt did the first way, but I like the latter and did just that.


Sprinkle some geem(dried seaweed) on top, salt and pepper to taste, and wallah! My first shot at dduk gook.

Concluding thoughts: Although the salt helped, the broth wasn't as beefy as I'd have liked it to be. I probably reduced the soup to about half of what I originally started with, but even then, the beef broth wasn't as strong as I wanted it. I will try sirloin next time like my granny suggested. Also, if anyone is reading this from the LA area, Chosun Galbi on Olympic has a kickass broth. My mom said it's probably because they also use bones and cook the broth for over a day, as well as possibly using MSG, which I may have to try. I'll probably need to use more meat as well with the amount of water I used.


I bought this as a Christmas present to myself and drank it today. 10.5%, which accounts for any typos I have in this post and will most likely fix tomorrow.


Let me tell ya. I first had this beer at B.J's, which surprisingly has some interesting bottled beers, and loved it. It definitely packs a kick. It has a small head and a wonderful fruity and malty taste. What I like best about it is that it's 10.5%, but doesn't have that bitterness that some of those strong seasonal beers have.

That's it folks. I'm off to bed. Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ya!