Myeolchi-guksu

Simple, restorative noodles in a clear anchovy-kelp broth — Korean home cooking at its most honest and nourishing.

Myeolchi-guksu is the backbone of Korean home noodle cooking, a dish of extraordinary plainness that reveals the quality of its single key ingredient: the dried anchovy broth (myeolchi-yuksu) that underpins a vast portion of Korean home cooking. The broth is made by simmering dried anchovies and kelp for twenty minutes — a process every Korean home cook performs as automatically as heating water for tea — and its clear, golden liquid has a clean, savory depth that forms the base for dozens of Korean soups and stews. Over thin somyeon noodles, it becomes a complete meal in its own right: a bowl of quiet efficiency that asks only for a sprinkle of sliced green onion, a pinch of sesame seeds, and the kimchi that invariably sits on the Korean table regardless of what else is being served. The dish is associated with convalescence, childhood, and the feeling of being cared for — it is the noodle soup a Korean mother or grandmother makes when someone is unwell or needs something gentle and nourishing. Its simplicity is its virtue, not its limitation.