Name: Ojingeo-sundae (Squid Stuffed and Steamed)
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 3 squid; 2 tbsp cooking sake; 0.5 tsp salt; 2 tbsp plain flour; 150 g minced pork; 150 g firm tofu; 40 g glass noodles; 100 g mung bean sprouts; 50 g carrot; 0.5 onion; 30 g garlic chives; 1 egg; 1 tbsp garlic; 1 tbsp sesame oil; 1 tsp salt; 0.5 tsp pepper; 2 tbsp soy sauce; 1 tbsp vinegar; 0.5 tsp gochugaru; 6 cocktail sticks

Ingredients

4servings

The squid (serves 4)
squid · medium, bodies not torn3
cooking sake2 tbsp
salt0.5 tsp
plain flour · dusted inside the body2 tbsp
The filling
minced pork · or the chopped tentacles and fins150 g
firm tofu · squeezed dry150 g
glass noodles · soaked and finely chopped40 g
mung bean sprouts · blanched and squeezed dry100 g
carrot · finely diced50 g
onion · finely diced0.5
garlic chives · chopped30 g
egg1
garlic · minced1 tbsp
sesame oil1 tbsp
salt1 tsp
pepper0.5 tsp
To serve
soy sauce2 tbsp
vinegar1 tbsp
gochugaru0.5 tsp
cocktail sticks · or cotton thread6

Steps

Reach into the body, pull out the innards and the quill and detach the tentacles. Do not turn the body inside out and do not skin it — the skin holding it together is what keeps it from splitting in the steamer. A torn body cannot be stuffed; send it to a soup or a stir-fry.
⏲ 15 min
Rinse the inside with the sake and salt, pat it dry, and dust the inside with flour. The flour holds the water between the filling and the body, so that when it is sliced the filling does not fall out of the skin.
⏲ 5 min
Wring the tofu and the blanched sprouts completely dry in a cloth. Water not taken out of the filling here pools inside the body while it steams and pushes the body open from within (wrapping and sealing).
⏲ 10 min
Mix the minced pork, squeezed tofu, chopped glass noodles, sprouts, carrot, onion and garlic chives with the egg, garlic, sesame oil, salt and pepper by hand. Glass noodles take up water and swell, so soak them and then chop them small.
⏲ 10 min
Fill each body only two-thirds full. Press out the air pockets with the back of a spoon but do not pack it tight. The filling swells and the body shrinks, so a full one bursts.
⏲ 10 min
Stitch the opening shut with two or three cocktail sticks across it, or tie it with thread. Then prick about five holes in the body with a stick or skewer — that is the route out for the steam that forms inside.
⏲ 5 min
Into a steamer with the steam already up, and 12–15 minutes over a medium-low heat. Turn it down so the water is not at a rolling boil. Squid muscle begins to firm past about 65°C, so a long steam makes the casing rubbery and contracts it further, pushing the filling out.
⏲ 15 min
Lift it out and cool it completely. Sliced hot the filling collapses — pyeonyuk and huiguorou chill before slicing for the same reason. Cold, cut into 1.5cm rounds and serve with soy sauce, vinegar and gochugaru stirred together.
⏲ 30 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Tentacle filling: the detached tentacles and fins chopped fine in place of the pork. Closer to the original Sokcho version and far more strongly of squid.
With glutinous rice: half the filling as soaked glutinous rice makes it much more substantial and easier to slice. Rice takes up a lot of water and swells, so fill only 60%.
Fried in egg batter: cooled, sliced, dipped in flour and egg and pan-fried, it becomes ojingeo-sundae-jeon — banquet food, and the way leftovers are used up.
Pollock sundae: in Gangwon and the old Hamgyong provinces a pollock body is stuffed instead. The principle is the same, but fish flesh contracts less and tears far more easily.
How it differs from sundae: there the blood sets and holds the filling together; here it is egg, glass noodles and tofu. But what really keeps this filling in one piece is not the binder at all — it is the casing tightening around it.

Tips

The casing is not an inert bag. The three other dishes on this site that fill one — sundae with pig intestine, weisswurst with sheep casing, haggis with a sheep's stomach — all use a casing that barely changes shape in the heat. A squid body is muscle. Its connective tissue contracts as it heats and the body can lose up to a third of its length, and that force pushes the filling out of the opening. Filling to two-thirds, stitching the opening and pricking the skin all follow from that one fact.
Ojingeo-bokkeum uses the same contraction in the opposite direction. That page says "scoring the inside of the body helps it curl neatly" and does not say why. The scored side shortens more than the unscored side, so it curls that way — one contraction, a shaping force in one dish and a thing to be resisted in the other.
And it is why "hot and fast" is in that page too. It says only that overcooking makes squid rubbery. Squid muscle begins to firm at around 65°C, and it is tender either very briefly (one to two minutes) or very long (past forty), with rubber in between. A 12–15 minute steam is a compromise inside that gap, which is why the rules are turn the heat down and do not steam it longer.
Wringing the filling dry is half the recipe. Wrapping and sealing says the water in the filling is what bursts a wrapper, and that is exactly it here. Squeeze the tofu and the sprouts, and chop the soaked glass noodles small.
Dust the inside with flour. It makes a thin layer between body and filling so the two do not separate when it is sliced. Skip that one step and the filling falls out of the cut face.
Slice it cold. Hot, neither the egg nor the noodles have set and a knife collapses it. Give it at least half an hour, and if it has been in the fridge let it stand a few minutes so the skin does not split.

The basics behind this dish

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More of the same kind

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