Miyeok (미역)

Miyeok is the brown seaweed Undaria pinnatifida, gathered and dried along the Korean coast, and it has long been eaten across the peninsula. Its best-known place at the table is miyeok-guk (미역국), the soup served to a woman after childbirth and to a person on their birthday, a custom that remains general in Korean households today. The seaweed is cultivated on lines in cold coastal water in the winter months and then dried, so that it keeps through the year in every pantry. It is carried by the home kitchen rather than by any one school, and it belongs to the everyday broth-and-soup tradition of the Korean table.

Miyeok is sold dried, as dark brown to almost black cut pieces or whole folded fronds, which swell to many times their volume when soaked in cold water and turn dark green and silky. Fronds are rinsed, soaked for about 20 minutes, drained and cut into short lengths before cooking. It is sold also as salted stem, miyeok-julgi, which is rinsed and cooked as a side dish. The texture is smooth, slightly slippery and tender with a faint bite at the midrib, and the flavour is clean, marine and mildly sweet. It is the base of miyeok-guk, usually cooked with beef brisket or with mussels or other shellfish, seasoned with ganjang and sesame oil, and it also appears in cold miyeok-naengguk and in miyeok-muchim, dressed with vinegar and gochujang.

Miyeok-guk is eaten with steamed short-grain rice and with kimchi, and the rice is often taken into the soup spoonful by spoonful. The sesame oil and ganjang of the soup are balanced against the sharp, fermented acidity of kimchi and the clean sweetness of the rice. The dressed miyeok-muchim is eaten cold with rice and is set against grilled or fried foods, where its vinegar cuts the fat. Beef or shellfish in the soup supplies savoury depth that the seaweed, mild in itself, receives and carries.