Juksun-chae (Bamboo Shoot Salad with Persimmon Dressing) · Han Bok-ryeo

If your bamboo shoots are salt-cured, soak them in several changes of cold water to pull the salt out, then boil them until they lose their raw, chalky edge.

💡 She gives no timing here. Ours: taste a sliver after each water change — when it tastes of bamboo rather than brine, it is done. Skimping leaves the whole salad salty before you have added a single seasoning.

Slice the boiled shoots lengthways into thin combs — keep the natural fan of the ridges — then fry them in a little oil with a pinch of salt and spread them out to cool.

💡 Cooling matters as much as cooking. Every element in a chae goes onto the plate at room temperature — warm ingredients sweat, and the moisture thins the dressing into a puddle.

Stir the beef-and-shiitake seasoning together: 1 tbsp soy sauce, ½ tbsp sugar, 2 tsp minced green onion, 1 tsp minced garlic, 2 tsp ground sesame, 1 tsp sesame oil and a pinch of pepper.

Dress the shredded beef and the rehydrated shiitake with that seasoning — in SEPARATE bowls, not together.

💡 Her method is explicit about this ('소고기, 표고 따로 따로'). Shiitake is a sponge — mixed together it soaks up the seasoning meant for the beef, and you end up with salty mushrooms next to bare meat.

Put the beef in a pan with 1 tbsp of water and stir-fry over medium until it turns from red to grey-brown and the liquid has gone, 2–3 minutes.

💡 The tablespoon of water is deliberate — it lets the seasoned beef steam loose instead of clumping and searing. Shredded beef hitting a dry hot pan welds into a single knot.

Push the beef to one side of the pan and fry the seasoned shiitake in the space you just made. Turn both out onto a plate and let them cool completely.

Fry the separated egg into thin yellow and white sheets and shred them. Shred the red chili fine as well.

Peel the persimmon and push the flesh through a sieve to get roughly 4 tbsp of smooth pulp.

💡 Sieve, don't blend. A blender whips in air and pulverises the seeds and skin flecks; the sieve gives you clean pulp and nothing else. This dressing has no oil in it at all — the persimmon is doing the body.

Blanch the minari and the bean sprouts briefly in salted water, refresh them in cold water and squeeze them dry. Cut the minari into 3–4 cm lengths.

💡 This step is OURS, not hers: her published method covers the bamboo, beef, shiitake, plating and dressing but never says what to do with the minari and sprouts, even though both are in her ingredient list. Blanching is the standard court treatment; we are naming the gap rather than pretending it isn't there.

Plate it: bamboo shoots in the centre, and the other elements arranged around them facing one another — beef opposite shiitake, minari opposite sprouts.

💡 Facing one another, not tossed. That is the whole grammar of a 채 — each ingredient keeps its own colour and texture, and the eater does the mixing at the table.

Lay the shredded egg and red chili over the top as the last colours.

Whisk the sieved persimmon with 2 tbsp vinegar, 1 tbsp honey, ½ tbsp soy sauce and ⅓ tbsp salt until it is smooth and pourable.

Serve the dressing in its own dish and pour it over ONLY at the moment of eating — this is her explicit instruction.

💡 Dress it early and it is ruined: the vinegar leaches water out of the bamboo and sprouts, and within ten minutes a crisp salad is sitting in pink liquid. This is the single most common way people wreck a 채.

At the table, mix everything through gently with chopsticks and eat straight away, while the bamboo still snaps.