Notes on Cheesy Dak-galbi with Somaek
Dive into the DNA of dak-galbi to understand the hows and whys
Learn more about the inspiration for this dish and the story behind it: Drinking Games, and a Pan of Cheesy, Bubbly Goodness
Get the recipe: Cheesy Dak-galbi with Somaek
peeling garlic (technique) - Garlic can be smashed with the side of a knife to release the skin and make peeling easy.
preparing garlic (technique) - If you want a sweeter, more subtle taste, just mince garlic. But if you want a punch and the full garlicky flavor, grate with a microplane or use your knife to make a paste with the garlic. You can use the edge of a cleaver with some salt to make a fine paste without even using your blade.
stir frying (technique) - Stir frying is a Chinese cooking technique “in which ingredients are fried in a small amount of very hot oil while being stirred or tossed in a wok.” In this application, a cast iron pan or other wide and shallow pan is used. After stir frying, the ingredients are covered and quickly braised in their natural juices.
quick braising (technique) - Braising usually consists of frying some ingredients on high heat to develop flavor, followed by covering the cooking vessel to cook the ingredients at a low heat slowly. In this application, we cover the ingredients after frying at high heat, but only need to braise for around 15-20 minutes to cook the small pieces of chicken and sweet potatoes mostly.
peeling (technique) - Peeling some ingredients makes them more edible and/or pleasant to eat. Some ingredients’ peels are unpleasant to eat, and can even be toxic. In this context, carrot and sweet potato skins are edible, but undesirable. Onion and garlic skins are extremely fibrous and inedible.
marinade (technique, concept) - Marinading ingredients allows them to absorb flavors and seasoning from other surrounding ingredients. Marinading can also result in a more tender end product depending on the ingredients used to marinade. In this recipe, the chicken is marinaded to give it some flavor with soy sauce, and milk is used to reduce some of the smell of the chicken.
stable cutting surface (habit) - A stable cutting surface ensures control and precision over cuts and other work, especially on a cutting board. Slicing away a side of the cylindrical carrot and sweet potato helps stabilize them and prevents them from rolling around. Also, cutting the onion in half does the same for a spherical shape, creating a flat surface to stabilize the onion.
clean as you go (habit) - When you have downtime (e.g. waiting for your food to cook), you can get a jump on cleaning up your workspace to save time and counter space. Washing your dishes and cleaning your space as you cook will reduce stress and time spent on the dish.
taste as you go (habit) - Tasting as you cook is like driving with your eyes open, it allows you to adjust seasoning, recover an imbalance, and so much more. You wouldn’t drive with your eyes closed, so don’t cook without tasting as you go. If I’m cooking for people other than myself, I like to have a couple of spoons or forks out for tasting so I don’t cross contaminate.
organized workspace (habit) - Keeping your workspace organized will make cooking feel less awkward, less stressful, and will have you feeling more effective and efficient. Some examples include pulling out all of my ingredients before starting to prep.
wash your hands (habit) - You’re touching food then eating it; wash your hands to make sure they are clean so your food isn’t contaminated.
garlic (ingredient) - Garlic is a pungent aromatic in the allium genus used across the world. Alliinase, an enzyme in the garlic cells, interacts with alliin, converting it into allicin when cell walls are broken. Allicin gives alliums that intense pungent flavor, and in garlic’s case, can introduce sharpness and some bitterness (McGee). Because of this, the way you prepare garlic affects the taste. Grated garlic is more pungent because there are more cells being ruptured. Minced garlic does not release as many juices and therefore is less pungent.
rice cakes (ingredient) - Rice cakes are a soft and slightly chewy addition to any dish. They provide a nice neutral balance and can act as a vehicle for surrounding flavors. Some good examples of this are tteokbokki and dak-galbi. In both dishes, rice cakes are the perfect vehicle for the spicy and savory sauce, and provide some textural contrast. The original dak-galbi recipe I use calls for rice cakes to be put in at the beginning of cooking, mainly for ease. However, rice cakes stick to the bottom of the pan and overcook if you do not stir consistently. This results in a more soft end product, with less chew and broken pieces. I prefer my rice cakes a bit chewy and whole, so I add my rice cakes near the end. I add thin coins of rice cakes 5 minutes before taking the pan off the heat, and thicker tubular rice cakes at the beginning with the other ingredients.
carrot (ingredient) - Carrots are full of fructose, glucose, and sucrose thats quite sweet. As you cook carrots, the cell walls break down and make sugar more accessible to taste buds. In this dish, carrots provide an orange color and that sweet flavor to help balance the heat. Also, they provide some textural contrast in the form of a slightly firmer bite relative to sweet potatoes.
sweet potato (ingredient) - Depending on the variety, sweet potatoes tend to have a lot of starch in them. They also contain an enzyme that breaks down that starch into maltose, a sugar that is about one third as sweet as table sugar. This provides another source of sugar to balance the heat. Sweet potatoes are the ingredient in this dish that takes the longest to cook. When the sweet potatoes are done, all of the other ingredients should also be done.
green cabbage (ingredient) - Cabbage is a widespread leafy vegetable that has a distinct sharpness as well as a slight sweetness. It’s used in a lot of fermented products and stews. McGee talks about how cooking cabbage below the boiling point develops the flavor compounds into a more flavorful and pungent concoction, while cooking some varieties near or above the boiling point reduces the pungency but introduces bitterness. In this dish, cabbage contributes to the complexity of flavor and some of the natural sugars present in the sauce.
ginger (ingredient) - Ginger is a highly aromatic rhizome that provides a distinct flavor, and packs a sharp punch. It’s commonly found throughout Korean cooking, and in this dish is combined with garlic for a distinct and ubiquitous aroma combo. Ginger’s punch is not toned down by cooking because the pungent chemicals responsible for that nice irritation are already present. Whereas onions rely on enzymes, which are sensitive to heat.
onion (ingredient) - Onions are an allium that contain a lot of sugar, and provide a distinct and ubiquitous flavor. Onions are great for caramelization because of their sugar content, but in this recipe they are not caramelized. “The key to the onion family’s appeal is a strong, often pungent, sulfury flavor whose original purpose was to deter animals from eating the plants. Cooking transforms this chemical defense into a deliciously savory, almost meaty quality that adds depth to many dishes in many cultures” (McGee).
green onion (ingredient) - Green onions are alliums present throughout East Asian cuisines. The whites of the scallion have a more pungent and aromatic flavor while the greens are often used for garnish or added later in the cooking process. For many Chinese stir-fried recipes, scallions are combined with ginger and garlic then fried in oil to develop the base flavor for the dish. In this dish, they add another layer of onion flavor to the ensemble.
perilla leaves (ingredient) - Perilla is an herb that has a spicy and mint-like taste, although is quite distinct from mint. Perilla leaves and seeds are used throughout Korean cuisine to provide a spicy and earthy flavor. Often, it’s used in stews (my favorite being 해장국, Haejang-guk, a pork neck stew belonging to the hangover stew family of Korean cuisine). It’s also used as ssam in both fresh and pickled forms. In this dish, it provides a nice herbaceous balance to the rich sauce.
hot green pepper (ingredient) - Green peppers have a grassy and spicy taste that provides a different layer of heat and flavor to the dish. In this dish they also provide some nice green color to contrast with the reds, oranges, and yellows.
chili powder (ingredient) - Chili powder provides a lot of sweet and spicy flavor for the broth, and also helps to thicken the sauce. “Thanks to their content of cell-wall pectins, both fresh and rehydrated dried capsicums develop a thick, smooth consistency when cooked and pureed for a soup or sauce” (McGee).
rice syrup (ingredient) - Rice syrup is a sweetener used in Korean cooking, and contains mostly maltose. Maltose is about ⅓ as sweet as table sugar, so it provides a bit more of a subtle sweetness. In this dish, it thickens the sauce, and results in a nice sheen.
mozzarella (ingredient) - Stringy, melted cheese that adds some fun, as well as some fat and balance to the spiciness. “Melted cheese becomes stringy when mostly intact casein molecules are cross-linked together by calcium into long, rope-like fibers that can stretch but get stuck to each other” (McGee).
gochujang (ingredient) - Gochujang is a fermented chili bean paste that pervade Korean cuisine. The fermentation process results in a lot of glutamic acid and lots of depth and complexity. Starches from glutinous rice flour break down into sugars that give the end product a sweet taste which nicely balances the heat from chili powder. Below shows one variation of the process to create gochujang from the Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods.
fermentation, glutamic acid(concept, ingredient) - Glutamic acid (MSG) is a byproduct of many fermentation processes. Glutamic acid provides that savory flavor to round out a dish, and just makes it taste good. Both soy sauce and gochujang are fermented products using soybeans and containing high relatively high concentrations of glutamic acid.
synergistic nucleotides (concept, ingredient) - MSG’s umami flavor can be intensified by up to 1500% with the presence of guanylate (GMP) and inosinate (IMP), two nucleotides naturally occuring in many foods. The large concentration of MSG in the gochujang, soy sauce, kimchi, green onions, carrots, and ginger, combined with the IMP found in chicken, can synergize to amplify the savory flavor of the dish.
pain, capsaicin (concept, ingredient) - It’s no surprise that chilis and other ingredients that provide controlled pain give us quite a bit of pleasure. While many are sensitive to the heat chilis introduce, I personally love that burning sensation. In On Food and Cooking,McGee posits that “the sensation of pain may also cause the brain to release natural pain-relieving body chemicals that leave a pleasant glow when the burning fades.
balance (concept) - Rich cheese balances spiciness through casein proteins latching onto capsaicin and taking it away. Both natural sugars from the vegetables and added sugar from the rice syrup balances the heat of chilis with sweetness.
natural sugars, sugars (concept) - Carrots, onions, cabbage, and sweet potatoes all have a solid amount of natural sugar in them. As they cook overtime those complex carbohydrates break down into fructose, glucose, sucrose, maltose with the help of enzymes and heat. In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee states that “most sweet potato varieties sweeten during cooking thanks to the action of an enzyme that attacks starch and breaks it down to maltose, a sugar made up of two glucose molecules that’s about a third as sweet as table sugar.” Rice syrup and gochujang provide a hefty dose of sugar and a nice shine to the dish. They also acts as thickeners for the broth, making it more easily coat pieces of vegetables, chicken, and rice cakes.
caramelization (concept) - Caramelization is only happening for some pieces of the vegetables close to hotspots for a significant amount of time. Because there is a lot of water present, we mostly aren’t getting to the temperatures that would start to meaningfully caramelize the sugars present. Once again, McGee with drops some knowledge in his book, stating that “both caramelization and Maillard browning proceed at a rapid rate only at relatively high temperatures.”
complexity, depth of flavor (concept) - The flavor of this dish is already quite deep with sweetness, savory umami from soy sauce and gochujang, and layered textures. If you wanted to deepen the flavor, you could brown the meat and/or veggies before moving onto the stewing step. There is a version of dak-galbi where the meat is charbroiled beforehand, giving it a browned and smoky flavor. “Foods cooked by “moist” techniques — boiling, steaming, braising — are generally pale and mild compared to the same foods cooked by “dry” methods — grilling, baking, frying.” You can also put kimchi in the dak-galbi to make it even more complex. Savory glutamic acid from fermentation, as well as sourness from the lactic acid present in kimchi would provide additional complexity to the dish.
color contrast (concept) - Red chili, white rice cakes, orange carrots, green pepper and perilla leaves bring layers of color, making the dish appetizing and visually interesting. Specifically, the food pigments present are both water and fat soluble. The result is a sauce with a brownish orange-red color after stewing for about 20 minutes.
textural contrast (concept)- Stringy mozzarella, chewy rice cakes, soft sweet potatoes, slightly soft carrots with a slight bite, broken down cabbage, onions, and perilla leaves, and meaty chicken thighs all occupy different textural frequencies and work together to create textural balance.
rendering fat, fat content (concept) - Chicken thighs contains a lot of fat and connective tissue that renders out over time. The result is a nice amount of chicken fat that gives nice flavor to the dish.
water content (concept) - Vegetables like cabbage, onions, and peppers have a lot of water in them that’s released when the dish starts cooking. These juices create a sauce that thickens over time and protects against burning. Maangchi calls for layering the vegetables in an exact order: cabbage, onion, carrot, green chili pepper, and sweet potato. I think this is both because of color contrast, but also because cabbage is least likely to burn, and will release its juices. Once the cabbage has released its juices, the onion will follow and the other vegetables will start to steam with the lid on.
heat retention, cast iron (concept) - Fat from the chicken and mozzarella retain heat for a long time. Also, cast iron is a porous metal that takes a long time to heat up and cool down. It constantly pumps heat into the dish to keep it warm. Usually restaurants serve this dish on a gas grill outside or in the middle of a table, so this is less of a consideration.
protein coagulation, emulsions (concept) - If you for some reason wanted a smooth cheese sauce, you could use some starch and evaporated milk to make an emulsification and effectively block the proteins from forming chains. From what I understand, emulsifying proteins in the milk lock fat and water molecules into place while starch gets in the way of the fat and protein molecules trying to clump up.
starch gelation (concept) - starch * (heat + water) = gel. Starch gets hydrated by water in tissue around it, and turns into a gel. Gelatinized starch might seem a bit dry because the moisture was sucked up into the gel, we can utilize the sauce and fat to bring moisture. Sweet potatoes and rice cakes in this dish contain a large amount of starch, and undergo starch gelation.
cheese in South Korea (context) - Cheese found its way into Korea around the 1960’s when a Belgian monk came through and started a cheese making operation with mountain goat milk. Additionally, American cheese was popularized around the Korean War era where C-rations contained American cheese. Budae-jjigae is a great example of how South Korean cuisine was modernized.