Recipe: Dduk Mandoo Gook (Rice Cakes and Dumpling Soup)

Happy New Year!! I’m so excited to announce that I was able to reach my goal of having 500 fans on Facebook! I’m overwhelmed by your support and would like to thank you for reading! It’s not too late, so if you’d like to join, feel free to go here.

And after many many many hours of toying with the look of the site, I decided that it’s now or never. I’ll be honest and say that there are some kinks that I’ll need to fix, but I’m glad to say that I now have a new logo and a new tagline. FINALLY! (If don’t see the new site, please make sure you clear your cache.)

I’d like to share a recipe for a traditional Korean soup that is eaten on New Year’s Day. When I was younger, people used to say that you’d have to eat this soup in order to be another year older. It was a rite of passage to being another year older. Whether you want to be another year older or not,this is a MUST have dish on New Year’s Day!

I saved some beef broth and bits I made from a different soup, so this soup was super easy to make. I had forgotten how more much flavorful real beef broth is. I enjoyed this soup so very much, especially with my mom’s homemade dumplings. I think it’s worth it to make the beef broth but feel free to use canned beef stock and frozen dumplings. Just a note – traditionally, you are also supposed to make a plain egg omelet, chop them up, and add as a topping. I just added the egg into the soup.

Recipe: Dduk Mandoo Gook (Rice cakes and dumpling soup)
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

1/2 pound of flank steak
20 vegetable and meat dumplings
3 teaspoons of soy sauce
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
2/3 cup of sliced rice cakes (about 12-14 pieces per serving)
1 scallion, sliced at an angle
2 eggs
4 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. In a large pot, add the large piece of meat and bring to a boil. Skim off the impurities and boil on low heat for about 2 hours (at least).

2. Remove meat from broth and once cooled, tear into smaller pieces, along the grain. Add soy sauce, sesame sauce and garlic to the meat. Set aside.

3. Usually, the rice cakes are frozen, so add enough water to cover and soak, about 15 minutes. Soaking helps the starch break down and keeps the rice cakes from being rubbery in the soup.

4. Bring 5 cups of beef broth to a boil. Add dumplings and cook on high heat for about 4-5 minutes. Dumplings are done when they start floating to the top. Drain water from rice cakes bowl and add to soup. Add meat.

5. Cook for another 4-5 minutes. Add eggs to the soup. Season soup with salt and pepper if desired. Garnish with scallions.