Sogogi Muguk (Beef and Radish Soup)

Name: Sogogi Muguk (Beef and Radish Soup)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 200 g beef brisket; 400 g Korean radish (mu); 1.5 L water; 1 tbsp sesame oil; 1.5 tbsp soup soy sauce (guk-ganjang); 1 tbsp garlic, minced; 1 pinch salt; 1 spring onion (daepa); 1 pinch black pepper

Beef and radish soup, an everyday Korean home soup. The radish is cut into thin squares and cooked until it turns translucent, and the broth is seasoned with soup soy sauce and salt. The same ingredients make two soups: fry the beef in sesame oil first and the broth comes out fuller and slightly cloudy; start the radish in water, add the beef and skim, and it stays clear. What decides it is whether fat went into the pot.

Ingredients

4servings

Soup
beef brisket · thin bite-sized pieces200 g
Korean radish (mu) · about a third of one; daikon works400 g
water1.5 L
sesame oil1 tbsp
Seasoning
soup soy sauce (guk-ganjang) · 1/2 tbsp for the beef1.5 tbsp
garlic, minced · 1/2 tbsp for the beef1 tbsp
salt · to finish1 pinch
spring onion (daepa) · sliced on the diagonal1
black pepper1 pinch

Steps

Press the blood off the beef with kitchen paper and season it with 1/2 tbsp soup soy sauce and 1/2 tbsp garlic for 10 minutes.
⏲ 10 min
Cut the radish into thin squares, about 3cm across and 0.5cm thick. Even thickness means it all cooks at once.
Heat the sesame oil in a pot over medium heat and fry the beef. When the outside turns grey, add the radish and fry 2-3 minutes more, until its edges begin to turn translucent.
⏲ 2 min 30 sec
Pour in 1.5L of water and bring it up over high heat. When it boils, skim off the foam, turn the heat to medium-low and simmer 20 minutes. When the radish is translucent right through, it is done.
⏲ 20 min
Season with 1 tbsp soup soy sauce and make up the rest with salt. Add the remaining garlic and the spring onion, simmer 2 minutes more and finish with pepper.
⏲ 2 min

Variations

Spicy beef and radish soup: add gochugaru when frying the beef and radish and season partly with fish sauce. Many households add soybean sprouts.
Instead of brisket: shank or round works. The leaner the cut, the clearer and lighter the soup.
The next day: the radish takes up the broth and softens further. If it has turned salty, add a little water as it reheats.

More detail and the reasons why (1)

Clear (tangguk): no frying. Bring the radish up in water, add the seasoned beef, skim the first foam carefully, then turn the heat down until the surface just trembles. This is the soup set out for ancestral rites, made with few strong-smelling vegetables.

Tips

Season once the radish is cooked. The water reduces as it simmers, so a soup seasoned at the start ends up salty.

More detail and the reasons why (5)

The same ingredients make two soups, and the difference is fat. Fry the beef in sesame oil first and fat goes into the pot; as the soup boils it is broken up into the broth, which comes out fuller and slightly cloudy. Start the radish in water and there is almost no fat to break up, so the broth stays clear. How hard a broth may boil is decided by whether there is fat in it to emulsify (stocks and broths).
Take the fried route all the way and you have miyeokguk. Beef and seaweed fried in sesame oil are simmered until the broth goes milky. Beef and radish soup stops much earlier on that road: twenty minutes cooks the radish, and the broth deepens without turning murky.
For the clear version, it is all skimming and heat. Skim in the first 10-15 minutes, before the foam disperses back into the liquid, and after that do not let it boil hard: a rolling boil breaks the proteins into fine particles that cloud the broth (stocks and broths).
Half soup soy sauce, half salt. Dark soy sauce adds colour and sweetness and turns the soup brown; salt alone keeps it clear but leaves it hollow. Soup soy sauce as the base and salt to finish is the same reasoning as kongnamul-guk.
Cut the radish thin and even. At 0.5cm the radish is done in the time the beef takes to turn tender (knife skills). Cooked radish is translucent to the centre; its raw bite goes in the simmering and the broth turns sweet.