Simplified Dak-kalguksu – Korean Chicken Noodle Soup

Dak-kalguksu

Dak-kalguksu

Hello my foodie friends! Here I am again with another Korean comforting soup. Who doesn’t like a good chicken noodle soup during the cold months? Ideal both for lunch and supper, and of course, it makes a great left over if you want to cook some extra to take to work or freeze.

Dak means chicken and kalguksu stands for knife-cut noodles. Making Dak-kalguksu from scratch is quite time-consuming and being this a simplified version I used bought fresh noodles. As part of this simpler approach, I also choose to incorporate the seasoning, which is  usually served separately, to the stock directly. However, I did make the stock, but for an even easier version you could use bought or pre-prepared chicken stock and chicken roast left overs. Generally the vegetables used to cook the stock are discarded afterwards, but I like to cut them and include them in the soup.

Let’s cook?

Advertisement

Ten months, ten posts: Reader’s Top Ten Recipes

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hello foodies of the world! Sorry for my absence the last few weeks. I’ve been pretty busy with no time for new recipes worth posting. Although I always cook, in busy days I tend to repeat old favourites or cook easy and quick things like omelettes and salads.

The truth is, I’ve never been good at extreme multitasking, I know, is shocking to acknowledge such a thing these days, but I’ve been like this since I can remember and I’ve made my peace with it. But, as I’m also a perfectionist, I rather do one thing at the time and do it right than to do everything just like that. To me, is like my father says: sometimes is not that I don’t have the physical time,  is that I have no “mental” time. Of course I keep challenging myself to find the balance, but I won’t fight my nature either.

I’ve thought of this post a while ago and since is less time-consuming than posting a new recipe is a good way for me to show up and say hi! I reckon that after 10 month blogging, it would be a good time to make a top ten of Around the Bowl’s reader’s favourites and give these recipes a second chance to be discovered and hopefully inspire someone new!

The top ten is based on the blog statistics for all ten months and the posts are rated upon visits and sharing figures. I hope you like the recipes if you haven’t tried them before or that they inspire you once again if you did! I’ll be back soon with new soup recipes to share!

Top Ten Recipes from Around the Bowl (so far)

1. Soup à l’ognion gratinée – French Grilled Onion Soup

2. Indian Minced Beef Curry

3. Mercimek Çorba – Turkish Lentil Soup

4. Thai Prawn and Lemongrass Soup – Ken Hom recipe

5. Ciorba de Perisoare – Romanian Meatball Sour Soup

6. Vegetarian Risottos – Aubergine and Mushroom + Spinach, Courgette and Mushroom

7. Parihuela – Peruvian Seafood and Fish Soup 

8. Dal Shorba (Indian Lentil Soup) with Summer Veggies

9. Avgolemono Chicken Soup – A Greek Egg and Lemon Chicken Soup

10. Thai Chicken and Aubergine Yellow Curry – The Basic Recipe

Mexican Lime and Chicken Soup – Mayan Perfumes from Yucatán

This is not just another chicken soup, its origin goes back to the Maya civilisation from the Yucatán Peninsula and nowadays represents a typical dish from Mérida cuisine. As lemongrass in Thai cuisine, the lime is the essential and distinctive flavour in this case.

I love it because it’s other of my light and easy soups to fix a quick and yet delicious and complete supper and also because lately I have developed a weakness for sour soups and have discovered that there is a version almost in every culture. Besides, I always have frozen chicken and limes at home (the last ones are more for my gin&tonics than for soups, but it works either ways, haha). I think it must be very good to cure a cold as well.

Typically is served with fried tortilla strips, or some people even use tortilla chips. I skip this part and stick with the healthier option… Would you like to try it?

Avgolemono Chicken Soup – A Greek Egg and Lemon Chicken Soup

Καλημέρα – Kaliméra! Greek cuisine has a world reputation of being delicious, hearty and the quintessential Mediterranean food. I have always loved it, although I have not mastered at home, but when I finally visited Greece I thoroughly understood why and that all of it was indeed true!

Yummy Greek Food

Acropolis of Athens

Greek Flag

Delicious Greek Cuisine

Athens, besides its historical richness, the imposing ruins and its cheerful ambiance also remains in my  top five best places to eat! Well, not only Athens: One day, while visiting the Aegina island, everything was so enjoyable that time passed by in a gorgeous lonely beach and so had the lunch hour, kitchens were already closing. So, Mr. Soup Taster and I started to wander around in the hope to find some gyro spot to grab a bite. Instead, lucky for us, a lovely lady (with a very trained eye for hungry customers) that was seated outside her big home terrace invited us in. As it turned out, it was her own restaurant, and although the kitchen was closed and she was resting outside, she offered to serve us anyway! We could immediately tell that the food was absolutely home-made and she could have been my grand mother would I had been Greek (well, and maybe some years younger, haha); what a delightful experience it was! We had a moussaka and some giant meatballs in tomato sauce that were to die for!

I’ve cooked moussaka before and in summer I usually prepare tzatziki, but that was as far as I went with Greek cooking until today, when I took a step further and prepared this delicious soup: a chicken and rice soup with Avgolemono, a lemon and egg sauce that provides a unique and exquisite texture. This was the first time I made it and it is already among my favourites! This is my quick and easy approach to it, let’s try it?

Chicken Laksa – Bliss from South-East Asia

To me Laksa is the queen of all soups, a world’s favourite originally from Malaysia and other South-East Asia countries like Indonesia and Singapore. There are many kinds, varying with the region and the ingredients, but one of the most popular and reproduced in the West is the curry Laksa: a curry and coconut based noodle soup . I have first tried it in Australia and then in Malaysia and have been cooking it at home since then, because I love it! (and there are no restaurants in the area where I live that serve it).

I often take the freedom to customise it depending on my fridge/pantry contents and cravings and I always include some  vegetables. Here it is a very simple recipe I cooked the other evening for supper, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Looking forward to your feedback!

Chicken, Leek and Mushroom Soup

I give it quite some thought to what soup recipe should I post first , should it be a traditional recipe, one discovered somewhere during a trip or should I risk a little with some creation of my own?

Some soups are already a “classic” in our every week menu; in fact I cook them often enough not to need a recipe any longer and to add some variations depending on the ingredients on my fridge, pantry and the inspiration of the day. So, I could go with any of these, but since just the idea of starting this blog turn on my creativity, I finally decided to start with a recipe I created the same day I started to shape “Around the bowl”

On one hand, chicken and leek are always a great combination in any dish and on the other hand, chicken and mushrooms are definitely two matching flavours, therefore by transitive property, so should be chicken+leek+mushrooms. I dare say without any doubt that it was!