Songsoo Kim’s Rapini Doenjang Guk (Flowering Spring Greens Soup)
A comforting umami soup made with Korean fermented soybean paste that celebrates seasonal spring produce. Recipe by Songsoo Kim. Photos by Emli Bendixen.
Good morning and welcome to Vittles! Today, we are publishing our Spring Recipe Supplement, comprising three soup recipes by some of our favourite cooks. This fresh, clean soup, by Songsoo Kim, is based around doenjang, a Korean fermented soybean paste (a cousin to red miso) that perfectly complements the vibrant spring greens. To read the rest of the series, please click below:
Melek Erdal’s lamb and rice dugun çorbası
Ixta Belfrage’s spicy fish soup with hot red pepper rouille
All the articles in the Spring Recipe Supplement are paywalled. To view them, you can subscribe to Vittles for £7/month or £59/year. Your subscriptions help to pay all our writers, photographers and illustrators at a fair rate.
In Korea, there are many genres of – and many different names for – what in the West is all broadly categorised as ‘soup’. There is jjigae (찌개), a rich and thick soup with chunky elements suspended within. There is tang (탕), which can be written with the same Chinese character (湯) to describe long-simmered medicinal soups. And then there is guk (국), which can easily be translated as broth, and is often served as an accompaniment to a meal.
The soup I’m sharing a recipe for here sits within the guk category. It is made with rapini (spring greens). In March and early April in the UK, spring may seem abundant, but don’t be deceived – while the promise of what’s to come is there, little is ready to be eaten just yet. Instead, nature offers what it can in lean moments: nettles, wild garlic – and greens like rapini.
Rapini, like kale shoots, collard shoots, spring greens and flowering brassicas, is most common in the UK as a byproduct of commercially grown crops. Although these greens rare appear in supermarkets or standard shops, they are delicious and versatile in their own right (but you’ll have to head to the farmer’s market or specialist stores to find them). In Korea, we believe that eating vegetables like this carries their energy into us, mirroring the act of blooming itself – the first push of life at the start of spring.
Rapini is excellent simply steamed or lightly sautéed, but its sweetness comes alive when massaged with doenjang, a fermented soybean paste that is a cousin to red miso. In this guk, doenjang-massaged greens are paired with a deeply umami soup made from dry seafood stock, which complements the dark chlorophyll and sweet flavour of the greens. The result is a deliciously balanced, comforting dish, perfect for spring.
Rapini Doenjang Guk (Flowering Spring Greens Soup)
Serves 2
Time 45 mins