Siraegi-godeungeo-jorim (Braised Mackerel with Dried Radish Greens) · Eom Seong-geun

Thaw the mackerel fillets (600 g) — 2–3 hours in the fridge, or 15–20 minutes submerged in water with the packaging still on. Both are his instructions.

💡 Leave the packaging on for the water method. Bare fish in water waterlogs, and a waterlogged fillet will steam rather than fry in step 3 — you lose the crust the whole dish is built on.

Rinse the 300 g of pre-boiled siraegi in cold water and squeeze it dry. If any stems feel coarse or stringy, peel the tough outer skin off them.

Heat 5 tbsp of oil in a pan and lay the mackerel in flesh-side DOWN. Fry 4 minutes — his figure — until the cut face is set and golden. Do not turn it.

💡 This is the move that keeps the fish whole. Four minutes on the flesh side builds a seared face that later holds the fillet together through 20 minutes of braising — raw mackerel dropped into sauce turns to porridge.

In a bowl, mix 5 tbsp gochugaru, 8 tbsp soy sauce, 3 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tbsp ginger juice, 2 tbsp sugar, 5 tbsp matsul and 3 tbsp corn syrup. Leave the fish sauce out for now — it joins later, exactly as he has it.

Put the squeezed siraegi into a wide, shallow casserole and dress it with PART of the sauce — massaging it in with your hands. Keep the rest back.

💡 He says 'part' and gives no split, so judge by eye: enough to stain every strand brown, with clearly more than half the bowl left over. The reserve is what becomes the braising liquid in step 7.

Lay the 550 g of potato slabs on top of the dressed siraegi, pour in 300 ml of the anchovy stock, and set the fried mackerel on top — flesh side UP this time.

Stir 2 tbsp of anchovy fish sauce and the remaining 300 ml of stock into the leftover sauce, then pour that around the pot.

Bring the pot up, and once it comes to the boil hold it on high for 10 minutes — his figure.

💡 Resist stirring. Everything is stacked in layers for a reason, and a spoon through the middle breaks the fish and drops it into the greens.

Drop to medium and simmer about 10 minutes more — his figure — until the sauce has reduced and thickened and a skewer slides through the potato without resistance.

💡 The potatoes are the doneness clock, not the fish. The mackerel was already 4 minutes into cooking before the pot was even built.

Baste the fish a few times with the sauce by tilting the pot and spooning liquid over it — do not roll it.

Scatter the thickly julienned onion (100 g), the diagonally cut daepa white, and the 2 Cheongyang and 2 red chilies over the top.

Drizzle over 1 tbsp of perilla oil and a single pinch of gochugaru, then take the pot off the heat and bring it to the table in the casserole.

💡 The perilla oil goes on with the heat already off. Cooked perilla oil turns bitter and loses its scent — its whole job here is the raw nutty smell that hits when the lid comes off.

Let it stand 2–3 minutes before serving so the raw edge comes off the onion and chilies but they still keep their crunch.