← Nouns Cooking · Korean

Ingredients

• 500 g whole mackerel, cleaned, cut into 4 pieces
• 400 g Korean radish (mu) or daikon, cut into 1.5 cm slices
• 400 ml Water
• ½ Onion, sliced
• 2 Spring onion, cut into 4 cm lengths
• 1 Green chilli, sliced (optional)
• 3 tbsp Soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Gochugaru (Korean chilli flakes)
• 1 tbsp Gochujang
• 1 tbsp sugar or honey
• 2 tbsp mirin or rice wine
• 4 cloves Garlic, minced
• 2 tsp Ginger, grated
• ¼ tsp Black pepper

Method

1. Rinse the mackerel pieces, scrape away any dark blood along the backbone and pat dry.
2. Lay the radish slices over the bottom of a wide, shallow pot, pour in the water and bring to the boil. Cook over medium heat for 8–10 min, until the radish is half tender.
3. Mix the sauce ingredients together.
4. Lay the fish on top of the radish, scatter over the onion and spoon the sauce over the fish. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat for 12–15 min, spooning the liquid over the fish a few times.
5. Uncover, add the spring onion and chilli and simmer for 2–3 min more so the sauce reduces a little. The fish should flake easily and the radish should be soft and red.
6. Serve with rice, spooning plenty of sauce and radish over each portion. Watch out for small bones.

Tips

• Ginger, garlic and rice wine tame the strong mackerel flavour; do not skip them.
• Rice-washing water (the cloudy water from rinsing rice) instead of plain water makes the sauce silkier.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

FutureDish Beyond Kimchee