How to cook Korean Food at Home

Fall is the season of harvest when grains and various fruits and nuts ripen. It’s also the time when a variety of mushrooms are harvested. Mushrooms are one of the best healthy foods of fall. They have a rich taste, aroma, and nutritional value, but are low in cholesterol, so they can contribute to a good diet and help to combat diseases common in adults. Recently, the mushroom has drawn greater attention as an anti-cancer food.

Korean people enjoy 10 kinds of mushrooms, out of which pyogo and songi mushrooms produced in Korea are recognized for their quality worldwide.

Mushroom jeongol is made of mushrooms with excellent taste and aroma and includes various mushrooms, such as netari, ssari, pyogo and songi
mushrooms, minced or sliced thinly. Mushroom jeongol is a dish with a delicious taste and unique scent, made by boiling seasoned mushrooms, beef, dropwart, and small green onions together in a casserole with meat stock.

Mushrooms are easy to obtain throughout the year. Besides jeongol, mushrooms can be used in making various dishes, including greens, mushroom rice, jjangajji (slices of radish dried and seasoned with soy), or fried mushroom dishes. In cooking mushrooms, it’s good not to put too much spice into them so that you can fully enjoy their flavor.

Mushrooms have been enjoyed not only in Korea, but also worldwide, and have been called the "food of the gods" in ancient Greece and Rome and a food for longevity in China. It will be great to relish the deep aroma of the mushroom, called the “meat of the earth” with its rich nutrition and the richness of fall, while enjoying mushroom jeongol with your family.

Ingredients

- Neutari mushrooms: 200 g
- Five pyogo mushrooms: 20 g
- Ssari mushrooms: 100 g
- Songi mushrooms: 100 g
- Beef: 200 g
- Small green onions:70 g
- Dropwart: 70 g
- Sauce: two spoons of thick soy sauce, two spoons of sugar, two spoons of minced onions, two spoons of minced garlic, one spoon of sesame salt, a moderate amount of pepper powder, one spoon of sesame oil
- Two and a half cups of water or meat stock
- A moderate amount of thin soy sauce and salt

Cooking Instructions

1. Clean neutari mushrooms thoroughly and tear thinly.
2. Clean pyogo and ssari mushrooms and shred them. Mince dried mushrooms after soaking and trimming them.
3. Mince songi mushrooms to a 0.5 cm thickness after removing dirt from the mushroom's roots and cleaning them.
4. Mince the beef.
5. Put half of the sauce into the beef and the rest into the mushrooms and season them.
6. Trim small green onions and cut them to 5 cm in length. Then cut dropwart to the same size after trimming and parboiling it.
7. Season meat stock (or two and a half cups of water) with salt and thin soy sauce and make soup.
8. Put seasoned mushrooms, beef and vegetables in a casserole and boil them with the prepared soup.

The article courtesy of Seoul magazine