Naeng Myun | NaengMyeon {recipe} - Korean Buckwheat Noodles in Chilled Broth

(Mul) Naeng-Myun / Korean Chilled Buckwheat Noodles in Broth {recipe}

At the Korean market, you will find naeng-myun in the Asian noodle aisle or with Asian noodles in the refrigerated section. Many of the brands sell the noodles in packages along with powdered soup base and serving seasonings (kind of like packaged ramen). I throw these packets out and make the broth from scratch. There will be times when you are tempted to rely on the packaged seasonings. It won't taste as good, but go ahead. It's not like I'll find out and hate.

Naeng-myun noodles consist primarily of buckwheat, but can also include arrowroot, corn, and sweet potato starches, as well as regular wheat flour. The different combinations will all differ ever-so-slightly in color, taste, and texture from one another, but for the most part, it doesn't matter. The only noodles from which you want to differentiate for sure are dang-myun, which is used for jap-chae and other soups and stews (thicker, more transparent like "cellophane," and more slippery), and buckwheat soba ("squared off" and not bouncy/chewy).

My version of the naeng-myun soup, the "mul" (which means "water") part of Mul Naeng-myun, is clear, light, and tangy, making it refreshing to me. Other recipes, particularly well-known restaurants, use very rich stocks as the soup base, often resulting in a somewhat frozen-but-gelatinous texture, since the soup is supposed to be cold. This is too weird for me.

Recipe Timing Recommendation: Start cooking the beef first to make the soup base. You can wash/peel/slice/prep all the vegetables and make hard boiled eggs while the soup is cooking, and then chilling (could be a few hours!). Naeng-myun noodles take about 5 minutes to cook; cook them just before serving.

Serves 4-6

INGREDIENTS

1 lb beef brisket
1 quart chicken stock + 1 quart filtered water (you can also used prepared beef stock in place of water if you have it for a much richer soup taste)
4 to 5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and smashed
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered length-wise through the root
3-inch section of daikon radish cut into ½-inch rounds
1 teaspoon salt
5-7 whole black peppercorns
¼ cup rice vinegar
1-3 teaspoons sugar, or to taste (optional)
1½-lb package Korean naeng-myun noodles
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 small Asian pear, quartered and thinly sliced
1-2 Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced
vinegar-pickled daikon radish slices (thinly slice daikon radish, pickle using Momofuku brine, recipe here)
cabbage kimchi, red pepper rinsed off under cold water
hard boiled eggs, half egg for each serving (how to make PERFECT Hard Boiled Eggs, recipe here)
to serve: toasted sesame seeds garnish, hot mustard

DIRECTIONS

Make Soup/Cook Beef: Rinse beef brisket, then place in a large pot, and cover with water by 1 inch. Bring to a rolling boil and allow it to boil out for about five minutes. Turn off the heat, carefully pour out the water with all the foam and fat, rinse off the beef and the pot (wipe out any foam/scum that sticks to the side), and add chicken stock, filtered water, garlic, ginger, onion, daikon radish, salt and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, the reduce heat and simmer for about an hour, covered, with just a little bit of space to let some steam out. The soup will reduce to about ¾ the original.

Once the beef is cooked, remove it to a plate and put in the refrigerator to chill and "set." When the beef brisket is cool enough to handle and more "solid," slice it against the grain as thinly as possible.

Strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve into a heat proof container. Chill the soup for a couple of hours in the refrigerator, you can also let it chill overnight.

Once the soup is chilled, stir in additional salt and pepper to taste, vinegar, and sugar.

Cook Noodles: Cook the naeng-myun noodles according to the package: bring water in a large pot to a boil (you can probably use the pot you used to cooke the beef/make the soup). Turn down the heat to medium and let cook for about 5 minutes. Drain into colander and rinse with cold running water several times while gently "massaging" the noodles. Drizzle the rinsed and drained noodles with sesame oil and gently massage the noodles to distribute the oil. Divide the cooked naeng-myun noodles among serving bowls right away because the noodles are somewhat "sticky" and start to clump together fairly soon (if they are left without liquid/broth).

Prep Naeng-Myun Bowls/Serve: Top the noodles in each bowl with a few slices each of Asian pear, cucumber, rinsed cabbage kimchi, beef brisket, and half a hard boiled egg. Carefully ladle soup into bowl around noodles. Add ice cubes to the soup in the bowls. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and serve with additional vinegar (using the pickling brine from the radish works well), hot mustard, and kimchi.