Fiery Beef Rice-Noodle Soup · Jachwi Yori Sin

Set a pot over medium-high heat with no oil and spread the beef brisket across the base in a single layer.

💡 No oil. Usamgyeop is cut for its fat and renders a pool of it in under a minute — that fat is the base of the whole bowl.

Let it fry until the slices lose their red, the edges catch and brown, and fat has run out into the pot.

Drop the heat to low. This next step burns in seconds at high heat.

Add the tablespoon of gochugaru straight into the rendered beef fat and stir it constantly.

Within 30 seconds or so the fat turns a clear, deep red and smells toasty rather than raw. Stop there.

💡 Beginner warning: burnt gochugaru turns the entire pot bitter and there is no way back from it. Low heat, spoon moving, eyes on the pot.

Pour in the 360 ml of water and turn the heat back up to high.

Stir in the chicken stock powder and the tablespoon of anchovy fish sauce.

💡 The fish sauce is doing the job a long-simmered stock would normally do. Do not swap it for salt — you would keep the saltiness and lose the savoury backbone.

Bring it to a hard, rolling boil — the surface moving across its whole width.

Add the frozen rice noodles and a handful of bean sprouts.

Boil for 1 minute only. The noodles go from stiff and opaque to soft and translucent almost at once.

💡 Frozen rice noodles are already cooked — you are reheating them, not boiling them. Two extra minutes and they collapse into the broth.

The sprouts should still snap when you bite one — a minute is enough for them too.

Kill the heat, scatter the green onion over the top and grind on plenty of black pepper.

Eat it now, straight from the pot, while the sprouts are still crisp.