Dakbokkeumtang (Braised Spicy Chicken)

Variations

• Brothy version: Use more water for a soupier, kalkalhan dish.
• Jjimdak style: Less chili, more soy for a sweet-savory braise (Andong jjimdak vibe).
• With rice cakes: Add tteok for an even heartier pot.
• Cheese finish: Melt mozzarella on top to tame the heat.

Tips

• The blanch takes out something the cook never put in. Blanching sorts the reasons for boiling something that is not a vegetable, and each of them acts on the ingredient's own substance — except the case eomuk bokkeum records, where "the blanch here removes oil rather than cooking anything", and budae jjigae gives its ham and sausage the same brief dip. Chicken skin is the same case: one to two minutes in boiling water takes the loose surface fat and the blood off, and what is bought is a sauce that stays red rather than slicked.
• Splitting the paste is not splitting one seasoning, it is moving five dials twice. Gochujang carries salt, sweetness and heat in one spoonful, which is what balancing flavour calls a joined dial — everything on it has to go in before anything can be judged. So the half that goes in at the start is aimed at the chicken, which has ten minutes alone with it, and the half that goes in with the vegetables is aimed at the potato and carrot, which were not in the pot for the first ten. It is salt and seasoning's "season in layers" with a paste instead of a pinch, and the layers are ingredients rather than moments.
• Big potatoes, and jjimdak gives the number of minutes they have to survive. That page: "cut everything large, and stop stirring once the potato is in. Large chunks survive twenty-odd minutes of braising with their corners." Here it is fifteen to twenty in the second stage, which is the same order of time — and a potato that disintegrates does not just lose its shape, it thickens the sauce on the way out and takes the second half of the paste with it.
• The glass noodles go in last because they arrive dry. They drink, so five minutes is what they are given and the sauce is reducing at the same time; put in earlier they take the liquid the vegetables are still cooking in. Jjimdak soaks its own in warm water first for the same reason — the soaking is the part of the drinking that can be done where you can see it.
• Blanch the chicken first for a clean sauce with no gaminess.
• Add the paste in two stages — half early, half later — so the chicken absorbs it and the vegetables taste good too.
• Cut the potatoes big; small ones disintegrate. Soft, sauce-soaked potato is the best part.
• Adjust sweetness with corn syrup/sugar and heat with chili and gochugaru.
• Add the glass noodles last so they stay springy.