Kimchi Jjigae (Kimchi Soup)

Most of the time when I visited a Korean restaurant, I didn't forget to order this classic Kimchi soup.  It is a complete flavour combinations in one bowl.  The sour salty taste that comes from kimchi, the star of this dish, is balanced with the sweetness from pork belly and is lifted up with the kick from gochujang or hot pepper paste.

With this pandemic is going on in outside world, it has changed my habit of eating out.  So I have to make my favourite food at home.  This soup is actually very easy and requires very short time in preparing and cooking.  Even beginner will have no problem making this dish.

Firstly, in a pot, cook your sliced pork belly with two cloves of garlic over medium high heat to give them a nice char color.  For the pork belly, I cut them a little bit thicker than normal slice because I like having to chew some chunck of meats.  Then add it in the kimchi and chilli paste and cook them until kimchi is slightly softened.  Kimchi and gochujang (hot pepper paste), these two ingredients are easily found in Asian groceries.  After that, pour water and juice of kimchi in.  Do not throw the kimchi juice away because this where all the flavour come from.  Reduce the heat to medium and bring them to boil.

Once it is boiled, you can season the soup.  I prefer to do it in this stage to avoid messing up the soft tofu and breaking those enoki mushrooms as well.  After I got the right flavour, I then topped with some soft tofu, enoki mushroom and scallions.  And lastly, I cracked one egg right in the middle and turned the heat off.  With this, the egg will come out nice and gooey.  Serve this dish with some steamed rice and it will become one of your top stew dishes.

Making this soup is very very simple yet taste absolutely unbelievable.  You always can use ordinary soup pot to make this soup as what I did.  So not to worry if you don't have that fancy black stew pot that the restaurant normally serves this kimchi soup with.

* For this recipe, I do not put the exact measurement for each ingredient because it was made with love and based on my mood too.
However, for this dish, I used half kilo of pork belly, one soup bowl of kimchi and two tablespoon-full of gochujang or hot pepper paste.  While the amount of soft tofu, enoki mushroom and seasoning is depending on your preference.

Gochujang / Hot pepper sauce