Nathan Lee shares about what he learned from cooking his mother’s recipe for Korean crab soup.
The rattle of large pots always signaled that mom was cooking kkotgetang, or Korean crab soup. I’d appreciated mom’s cooking except for that one dish. Too bulky for chopsticks, the crab required tedious cracking and extracting. I enjoyed the crab’s contents, but hated the pungent smell that stuck to my fingers afterward. Worse, the stench wouldn’t leave my hands no matter how much soap I scrubbed between my nails. Despite the crab’s tastiness, I stubbornly decided that peeling it wasn’t worth my time.
Thus, for nearly a decade, I stuck to what was comfortable, just the broth. “Good enough,” I’d told myself, careful to avoid the mess and the struggle. Originally, I thought kkotgetang only consisted of blue crab and doenjang (or soybean paste), but when I became Mom’s apprentice chef a year ago, I noticed the finer elements. Diced yellow zucchini, scrubbing crab shells and peeled shrimp, savory seasonings in the pot. By dinnertime, our fingers smelled of freshly ground garlic, tongues scorched from a dozen taste tests, eyes teary from onion attacks.
After I labored, the savory steam invited me to try a bite. I extracted a small clump of crab. Its flavor was different from what I’d remembered. I tasted the slow, soft boil that took at least four hours. The craftsmanship of slicing aromatic green onions to careful centimeters; the labor of calculating doenjang to the precise ounce. The satisfaction erased the ache in my weary hands.
Despite my amateur culinary status, I’ve started cooking for others. Passing around homemade rice balls with my family seasoned our Saturdays with a little more flavor. The kids I tutored at school didn’t seem to mind the stinky hands from the kimchi triangle kimbaps I shared with them, and would leave the session with their bellies and minds full.