Tofu soup — or jjigae/soondubu — is all the rage now. Right up there with Korean fried chicken and kal bi ribs, a staple of the Hawaii plate-lunch diet.
Growing up Korean in the 1960s-‘80s, I took tofu jjigae for granted. It was just something my grandmother (halmeoni) and then, after she died, my mom (umma) made me every day for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. Usually with half-fried/half-steamed Corvina fish and my grandma’s mouth-watering kim chee namul, made with the green stems of (I think) the daikon plant.
Forgive me, it’s been ages.
I live in a small Idaho town, now. I’m 57 (yikes), with nowhere to go to get my Korean fix. The only Asian market is pitifully lacking in any ingredient other than the most popular. Fred Meyer offers more Asian products in comparison, and that’s not saying much.
If I want Korean food, I have to drive two hours up to Gangnam in Boise.
Or find a kitchen mama hiding somewhere in the fast-developing suburbs.
Or…make it myself.
Problem is, my mom lives all the way in Honolulu, and she’s not the best with directions. Her memory’s off, too, so it’s a wacky sitcom comedy trying to get a basic recipe from her.
She and my grandma always made tofu jjigae from scratch, including the hot pepper paste (gochujang) they made kim chee with. But, you see, mom doesn’t remember that. She’s gone pre-packaged convenience all the way.
What I’ve done is piece together her broken English and my eye for breaking down a recipe into its spare, essential parts, for the tofu jjigae of my youth, which I plan to make this week — god, and time, willing.
Below is the recipe, with variations and options. If you think of tofu jjigae as Korean soup, which it is, you can mix and match ingredients, depending on what’s available.
As long as you pair a kind of stock (liquid) with flavorings (spices, seasonings, vegetables, aromatics, meat), you can make a decent one. Seafood, beef, chicken, vegetable stock…a pot full of water, dried kelp (a kind of seaweed used to flavor Asian broth), and dried anchovies on simmer…any flavored liquid will do. My grandma put fish roe (eggs) and eyeballs in hers, I swear.
The key really is in the hot pepper paste. Lots of grocery stores and Amazon now carry packaged hot pepper paste. Choripdong Authentic Korean Hot Pepper Paste is a good brand to start with, and at least you’ll know you can get your hands on it via delivery.
If you want to make it from scratch, you’ll have to dig a little deeper for access to some of the more exotic ingredients, like fine and coarse Korean red pepper powder (gochugaru), the stuff they make the gochujang paste from, glutinous rice, fermented soybean — miso, malt powder, blah blah blah.
Pickled Plum has a good recipe for Quick Homemade Gochujang. Play around with the ingredients. Sweet, spicy, salty.
Other food bloggers mix up sesame oil, garlic, and fish sauce with the red pepper to get an estimation of the spicy-salty taste.
Mom? She buys ready-made cartons of soy bean (seafood flavor) and hot pepper paste, along with packets of dashi soup stock.
“If I run out of dashi,” I asked, “can I use beef or chicken broth?”
“Yeah. Same thing,” she replied.
Despite what you hear, there is no hard-and-fast rule on what goes in or stays out of tofu jjigae. It doesn’t matter if you finely chop your green onion, separate the green from the white, use Korean green onion or American. My mom just cuts her green onions three times and calls it good.
You don’t even have to have silken (soft) tofu on hand; firm is fine. Mom uses it all the time.
Add any aromatics and vegetables you want. Just don’t leave out onion. Onion, everyone agrees, is essential, or the soup tastes bland.
Whatever you do, jump in and have fun experimenting. It’s Korean food, not rocket science. It’s also Korean peasant food, made from scraps, often under duress…one war after another. Far from James-Beard precious. Unless you slip sugar in the broth (please don’t do that), you can’t ruin this.
Mom’s Tofu Jjigae Recipe
Ingredients:
Stock
Soybean paste, 1 big spoon (more or less to taste)
Hot pepper paste, 1 big spoon (ditto)
Powdered dashi bonito soup stock, 1 packet
Water to cover ingredients
Aromatics
1 onion, sliced or chopped (mom sliced them in half-moons)
1 green onion, cut in two or three sections (no need to chop any smaller)
4 or 5 green chili peppers (mom uses serrano)
Vegetables, like mushrooms — any kind — and zucchini, sliced
Flavorings, optional
Meat: seafood — 4 or 5 pieces raw shrimp or 1 frozen multi-seafood package (clams, shrimp), pieces of beef, poultry, or pork
Seasonings
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder or minced garlic
Onion powder
Tofu
It doesn’t matter if it’s the Korean kind you squeeze out of the tube, or even if it’s medium or hard, as long as it’s tofu, and a lot of it.
That’s what she said…
Directions
If you want, heat up a tablespoon each of a neutral, high-heat oil, like peanut, and sesame on a medium flame, with a little sliced mushroom, onion, green onion, about 1/4-1/3 cup of a meat, like pork slices or pork mince, until almost cooked through. Mix in a little of the gochujang (pepper paste), a teaspoon or so, and a sprinkling of fish sauce and soy, and stir-fry with the veggies.
Put some water in the pot, not too much at first, maybe half a cup. Turn heat up to low-medium.
Stir in one big spoon each of the soybean and hot pepper paste to the water, one package of the dashi stock, and sliced onion. Add a little more of the pastes to taste, as you go.
Add sliced vegetables of your choice. Zucchini and mushroom really flavor the stock well. Add four or five green chili peppers, like serrano, chopped up or whole. It doesn’t matter what kind. Hold back on the green chili peppers, if you prefer your tofu jjigae milder.
Throw in the sautéed aromatics — if you added this step in the beginning.
My mom puts a frozen bag of multi seafood mix of clams and shrimp she buys at the Asian market, into the broth. But multis are hard to find nowadays, so four or five pieces of raw shrimp (in or out of their shells) will do. Small scallops, mussels, any seafood’s fine. This is optional.
Traditionally, Korean people have used pieces of pork or beef as the meat flavoring. I like a pork and seafood combo myself. Up to you. There’s even a vegetarian version. As long as you have a flavorful stock going and Korean chili pepper, you’ll be fine.
Finally, add seasonings, like salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, or regular chopped/minced garlic, tasting as you go. (My grandma used to make paste from garlic cloves and salt by smearing them against the cutting board with the side of her large knife.)
Fill more water to cover the ingredients in the pot, then let everything boil. Keep tasting and seasoning. Also, watch that the pot doesn’t boil over; adjust the heat accordingly. You are looking for the zucchini, mushrooms, and other veggies to get soft.
After the mixture comes to a boil, and the veggies have softened, add in the tofu and green onion last. My mom usually cuts up the tofu block into bite-sized cubes before adding. But you can cut them up with a spoon in the pot.
Simmer the jjigae until the tofu and vegetables float. It may take a few minutes for the broth to infuse into the tofu, especially if it’s firm. Do not overcook the tofu or the green onions.
It’s ready when the broth has enough flavor.
Below are some decent YouTube videos on making tofu jjigae, especially the first one by FoodSpoon. She shows you how to McGyver the hot pepper paste that is the base of this jjigae. For the purists in the room.
Yum!! Now I have to make some...