Let’s move onto another of my mom’s non-recipe dishes. This time, we’re making oxtail soup. What’s oxtail soup? Well, it’s exactly like it sounds. It’s soup made from the oxtail. Again, no recipes! No measurement! Just more of who the heck cares? Get a package of oxtails from your local grocer, it’s probably easier to find at asian groceries, and soak it in cold water for awhile to let the blood out. It will become considerably less deep red than before. You can also get rid of any obvious fat.
Eventually, throw these into a big pot with water and boil, boil, boil!
After a good hearty boil, dump all of the water out and leave the oxtails in. Wipe away any of the foam that may be left behind.
Fill the big pot back with water and put it back on the burner. And start heating.
While it’s heating up, add a whole raw onion. Nothing else, just add an onion.
Cover and let it simmer for hours and hours and hours. Just let it cook and cook and cook. And eventually, it will be ready! You can tear the meat off of the oxtails and then discard the bone bits. Remember, this has nothing in it except water, oxtail, and a whole onion. So whoever is eating it can add salt, pepper, and scallions to their liking. It’s really up to the eater to add what they want. Typically, it’s eaten with rice. It takes time, but it’s beyond simple to make!

One of my favorite korean dishes is yukgaejang, which is a spicy soup/stew with beef. It’s something that my grandmother used to make really well. I really miss hers. So when were in Columbus, my mom made some. So my mom is a lady who doesn’t know recipes and who doesn’t measure anything. So I can’t really help you there either. But you can get a general idea from this post. For actual recipes, google it!
In a large pot, combine a whole lot of blanched bean sprouts, some packaged fernbrake (that’s the brown stuff), and a lb of beef brisket that’s also been blanched a bit in hot water and cut into big hunks.
Cut up a handful of stalks of green onion into one inch pieces and blanch those. Add to the previous large pot.
Add in a handful of chopped garlic cloves.
Next up, slice an onion into thin slices and add. Then add some sesame oil. I’m not sure how much… maybe just a good dash?
Next up, add some korean hot pepper flakes, kochukaru. I think how much depends on how hot the flakes are and how hot you want the yukgaejang. I would guess it was like a heaping wooden spoonful.
Start mixing!
Add water to cover everything and start heating.
Add a bunch of chicken broth.
Add a dash of fish sauce,  a little bit of salt, and then heat this sucker on low heat for a long time. I’m talking hours. The meat will become really tender and you can shred it anytime along the cooking process.
Once ready to serve, you can heat up some clear noodles and then put a little bit of that in the bowl along with the yukgaejang. Then eat away along with some rice!

Instead of heading into the city, I decided to spend my last night in the burbs and ended up busting a gut at BCD Tofu House in Edmonds. I’ve been to one before in LA, so I knew what to expect. I ordered a spicy pickled crab & tofu combo. I got a whole bunch of banchan, including this entire grilled fish. It’s impossible to go hungry here. This banchan wasn’t particularly amazing, but it was just fine.
Here’s the crab. Typically, it’s one of my favorite korean dishes of all time. Here, it was only ok. The crab didn’t taste that fresh and the flavor was only so-so. But heck, there was tons of it! And most of the crab was claws, which a lot of you probably prefer.
Here’s my little steaming cauldron of soondubu! Yum! I think there was beef and seafood in this. It just seemed to have a little bit of everything. It was also ok.
They have the “purple” rice here, which is cool. The rice comes out in its own little cauldron, but when the server comes out, she transports the rice into a metal bowl and then leaves the leftovers in the cauldron with you. Then she fills the cauldron with hot water.
Then you can mix up the water with the leftover rice and also eat that. It’s actually probably my favorite part of such a soondubu meal, even though it’s probably the most boring! This place is pretty small, and there’s only one server working in the whole place. Despite this, the service was quite fine and the food came out quickly.