Flounder Seaweed Soup

Serve when

Serve the moment the seaweed turns silky and deep green in the just-simmered broth.

In the series

Season 1

S1E5 · ~00:48:00 White Spoon Choi Hyun-seok leads his team's seafood-category dish, a flounder and miyeok (seaweed) soup, in the Round 3 team match — the dish that carries the White Spoons to a narrow win in that category

In the series

Miyeok-guk is traditionally a birthday and new-mother soup in Korea, and building it around delicate flounder for the seafood category turns a homey, everyday dish into a technically exact restaurant plate — precisely the kind of quiet, confident cooking that edges the White Spoons ahead in this round.

Ingredients

1 lb flounder fillet, cut into large pieces
1 oz dried miyeok (seaweed), soaked and rinsed
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
6 cups anchovy-kelp stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce, plus more to taste
Kosher salt, to taste
1 scallion, sliced

Method

Squeeze the soaked seaweed dry and cut it into shorter lengths.
Warm the sesame oil in a pot, add the seaweed and garlic, and stir-fry for a minute until fragrant and slightly darker in color.
Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer, letting the seaweed soften further and give up its flavor, about 10 minutes.
Season with the soy sauce, then gently add the flounder pieces and simmer just until the fish turns opaque and flakes easily, 3 to 4 minutes.
Adjust salt to taste and finish with the scallion.

Substitutions

Miyeok: sold dried at Korean grocers as "dried seaweed for soup" — don't substitute nori or wakame salad seaweed, which behave very differently once simmered.
Flounder: any mild, flaky white fish — sole, fluke, or halibut — works in its place.

Beyond the recipe

Go deeper

Wikipedia: Culinary Class Wars