hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re diving back into our series dedicated to foods from TV and film with a shot at the sundubu jjigae from the FX series “The Americans.” For those unfamiliar, the stew that the Jennings family are eating here is a classic Korean kimchi and soft tofu stew, prominently featuring the Korean chili powder “gochugaru,” which is a fairly mellow form of spice (not unlike the chili powder found here in the states). Sundubu jjigae also leans very heavily into fishy and brine-y umami with its use of a dried kombu sea kelp and anchovy stock, not unlike the rabokki recipe that we did a few months back as well.

While our gochugaru certainly does give the stew a deeply red color that looks quite spicy, I honestly think that this is a bit of a mislead, and it looks a little spicier than it actually is. Lastly, the final note that I’ll mention is that a truly classic sundubu jjigae is made using a Korean dolsot stone bowl. Apart from being a super iconic part of how this dish is plated, it also allows to you cook the stew directly in the stove in the bowl that you’ll be eating out of, which (as we’ll see in a moment) ends up being a super important part of how our poached egg turns out. I don’t own a dolsot stone bowl, so I’m gonna run through my best approach to work around this today as well. Hope you try it.

It will be out on Friday December 24, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

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