Japchae (Korean Glass Noodles)
Sweet potato noodles tossed with beef and vegetables cooked one at a time. Good hot, good at room temperature, good the next day.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 480
- Calories
- 22g
- Protein
- 16g
- Fat
- 62g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 200 g dangmyeon (sweet potato starch noodles)
- 250 g beef sirloin
- 150 g spinach
- 2 carrots
- 1 onion
- 150 g shiitake mushrooms
- 1 red pepper
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 3 tbsp toasted sesame oil
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp sesame seeds
- Neutral oil and salt, for cooking
Instructions
- 1Slice the beef into thin strips. Mix 1 tbsp of the soy sauce, 1 tsp of the sugar, 1 clove of grated garlic and 1 tsp of the sesame oil, and marinate the beef in it while you prepare everything else.
- 2Cut the carrots, onion and red pepper into thin matchsticks. Slice the mushrooms. Grate the remaining garlic.
- 3Bring a pan of water to the boil. Blanch the spinach for 30 seconds, drain, squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands, and toss with 1 tsp sesame oil and a pinch of salt.
- 4Cook the noodles in the same water for 6 to 7 minutes, until fully translucent and springy. Drain, rinse under cold water to stop them cooking, then cut through the pile two or three times with scissors — full-length dangmyeon are almost impossible to eat.
- 5Toss the drained noodles with 2 tbsp of the soy sauce and 1 tbsp sesame oil straight away, while still warm. Seasoning them now stops them sticking and means they are flavoured all the way through rather than just coated later.
- 6Heat a little neutral oil in a frying pan over high heat and cook each vegetable separately, seasoning each with a pinch of salt: onion for 2 minutes, carrot for 2 minutes, pepper for 90 seconds, mushrooms for 3 minutes. Move each to a large mixing bowl as it is done.
- 7Cook the marinated beef in the same pan over high heat for 2 minutes, until browned, then add it to the bowl.
- 8Add the noodles, the spinach, the remaining 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sugar, remaining sesame oil and the grated garlic.
- 9Toss everything together thoroughly with your hands or two spoons, lifting from the bottom so the seasoning reaches all of it. Taste and adjust — it should be gently sweet and savoury.
- 10Finish with sesame seeds. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Japchae is the dish Koreans make for parties, and the reason is practical: it is one of the few noodle dishes that is just as good at room temperature an hour after it was made.
The noodles are not wheat
Dangmyeon are made from sweet potato starch. They cook up glassy and translucent with a distinctive springy chew that wheat or rice noodles do not have, and they hold their texture for hours instead of going soft.
They are naturally gluten free. They are also sold dry in long, tough bundles and need a proper 6 to 7 minute boil — undercooked, they stay chalky in the middle.
Cut them, seriously
Dangmyeon come out of the pan enormously long. Nobody can eat them gracefully and they tangle into a solid mass. A few cuts through the drained pile with kitchen scissors is standard practice in Korean kitchens, not a shortcut.
Season the noodles while warm
Warm starch noodles absorb seasoning; cold ones repel it and stick to each other. Tossing them with soy sauce and sesame oil immediately after draining does two jobs at once — it flavours them from the inside and coats them enough that they stay separate.
Leave them plain and dress everything at the end and you get bland noodles under seasoned vegetables.
Cook the vegetables one at a time
This is the same principle as bibimbap and it is the part that takes the time. Each vegetable has a different water content and a different ideal cooking time. Onion wants two minutes to sweeten, mushrooms want three to drive off water and brown, pepper wants ninety seconds to keep its snap.
Thrown into one pan together, the wet ones steam the dry ones and everything ends up uniformly soft. Separately, each keeps its own colour and bite, which is what makes the finished bowl look and taste layered.
One pan, wiped between, is fine. It takes about twelve minutes total.
Squeeze the spinach
Blanched spinach holds a surprising amount of water — enough to dilute the seasoning of the whole dish. Squeeze it hard in your hands until it stops dripping, then season it on its own before it joins the bowl.
Nutrition
Around 480 calories a serving with 22 grams of protein. The vegetable spread does real work here: carrot and spinach for vitamin A and K, pepper for vitamin C, and beef for iron and zinc.
Leave the beef out and add extra mushrooms for a vegetarian version — japchae is commonly made that way and loses very little. It keeps for three days in the fridge and is eaten cold as often as warm.
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