Mi-yuk Gook

Today, I received a special gift from my Korean classmate, Jong Suk. It's a recipe of a traditional Korean seaweed soup called 'Mi-yuk Gook' together with the main ingredient which is the dried 'mi-yuk' seaweed from Korea. I tried cooking it for today's dinner and it turned out to be very delicious. So, here I am, sharing the delicious recipe with you.

Mi-yuk Gook is also known as the “birthday soup” in Korea as the seaweed soup is considered a must for pregnant and nursing women, as eating seaweed is an effective way of stimulating healthy breast milk production. Besides that it is also good for students as seaweed is believed to support optimal brain function. Naturally low in calories and fat and high in calcium, iron, and protein, it is a light and healthy soup good for any meal of the day.

To prepare this dish, firstly, you need to get dried seaweed. Ask for the kind used to make seaweed soup (mi-yuk gook) and not the thin kind used to make kimpap or sushi.

1 package of dried seaweed (1oz is enough for four servings)

6 cups of broth (depending on the kind of meat you want to use. Vegetable broth can be used to. Since I used shrimp, I boiled the heads with 1 bulb of onion and 2 cloves of garlic and used the broth for the soup.)

meat (depending on your preference: chicken, beef, seafood etc)

2 teaspoons of sesame oil

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

salt to taste

Soak seaweed in water for two hours or until soft. Drain, rinse really well, and squeeze out all the access water.

The dried seaweed straight from the packet.

After being soaked for about 2 hours.

Cut into about 2-inch pieces.

In a pot, saute seaweed in sesame oil for about 3 minutes.
Add garlic and continue to saute for another 3 minutes.
Pour in the broth and add in meat.
Let it boil and add mushroom (optional).
Add salt and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

In the pot.


Ready to be served.

Koreans traditionally enjoy this seaweed soup with a bowl of white or brown rice. I like to have my rice together in the soup. It tastes really good and I'm glad that my sweetheart loves it very much.

p.s. the original recipe doesn't call for mushroom but I added in mine as I'm always crazy about mushrooms!!!

Vegetable Kimpap aka Sushi

Today, after seeing my friends eating kimpap at school, I decided to try making it on my own. So, right after class, Mi Young and I dropped by at Villa Market to get the ingredients needed to make kimpap. I got:

a pack of seaweed

ebiko

chuka wakame


golden mushrooms, zucchini and baby asparagus.

I have never made this before and really have no idea of where to start. Luckily there's a set of instructions on the seaweed pack. It says:

Step1: Place Nori onto sushimat ( since I dont have a sushimat I used foil paper.

Step2: Spread sushi rice (rice mixed with vinegar, sugar and salt) onto the seaweed. I didnt have the measurement for this. Wanted to check online but unfortunately internet was down. So I just mixed 3 tablespoon of apple cider with a little bit of salt and sugar. Since I dont have Korean or Japanese rice, I used a mixture of Thai Jasmine rice with Thai brown rice.

Step 3: Arrange fillings across the rice.

Step 4: Moisten edge of seaweed and roll lightly.

Step 5: Apply firm pressure all the way and make sure to overlap to seal.

Step 6: Moisten knife, slice into 8 equal pieces.

# You can add any fillings as desired. The next time around I'd like to try Kimchi Kimpap.