Sukju Namul

the mung bean sprout banchan of the Korean table: sprouts blanched for barely a minute, shocked cold, squeezed dry, and dressed by hand with sesame oil, garlic, and salt so they stay squeaky

Origin: South Korea

From the journey of Mung Bean.

Sprouting is a Chinese invention and one of the great pieces of pre-modern food technology: a dry bean germinated in the dark for four days becomes a crisp, watery, mild fresh vegetable, available in the depth of winter when nothing at all is growing outside. Korea took the technique and made the mung sprout, sukju, one of the fixed namul of its table, the seasoned vegetable dishes that arrive as banchan alongside rice and appear, arranged in their colours, on a bowl of bibimbap and on the ancestral memorial table. Korean tradition attaches a curious etymology to the name. The sprout is said to be called sukju after Sin Suk-ju, a fifteenth-century scholar-official who served the usurping king Sejo and was regarded by many as a turncoat, on the grounds that his loyalties wilted as fast as a bean sprout does the moment it meets a hot pan. The story is probably folk etymology, but it is universally repeated in Korea and it does capture the one technical difficulty of the dish: mung sprouts collapse almost instantly with heat, and the entire skill lies in blanching them for less time than instinct suggests and stopping the cooking dead. A properly made sukju namul squeaks against the teeth.

Ingredients

Sprouts

  • 400 g fresh mung bean sprouts
  • 2 litre water
  • 1 tsp fine salt, for the blanching water

Dressing

  • 2 clove garlic, very finely chopped or grated
  • 1.5 tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 0.75 tsp fine sea salt, or to taste
  • 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds, lightly crushed
  • 1 whole spring onion, very finely sliced

Method

  1. Pick over the sprouts, pinching off any brown or straggly root tails and discarding loose green husks. Rinse in two changes of cold water and drain.
  2. Bring the water to a rolling boil with the teaspoon of salt. Tip in the sprouts, put the lid on, and cook for 60 to 90 seconds only from the moment they go in.
  3. Drain at once and plunge the sprouts into a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking dead. Leave for a minute, then drain again.
  4. Take up handfuls of the cooled sprouts and squeeze them gently but firmly to expel the water, without crushing them. Spread them out in a bowl.
  5. Add the garlic, sesame oil, salt, sesame seeds, and spring onion, and toss with your hands, lifting and separating the strands rather than stirring. Taste for salt and serve at room temperature.

Notes

Mung sprouts (sukju) are short, slim, and delicate; they are not the same as soybean sprouts (kongnamul), which are longer, have a large yellow head, must be cooked considerably longer to be safe and palatable, and make a different namul altogether. Do not substitute one for the other without adjusting the timing. The dish keeps two days refrigerated but is noticeably best within a few hours, since the sprouts continue to soften. It is one of the standard components of bibimbap and of the jesa ancestral table, and a version with a spoonful of gochugaru and a splash of vinegar added is served as a sharper, spicier variant. To sprout your own, soak whole mung beans overnight, drain, and keep them in a covered jar in the dark, rinsing twice daily for three to four days until the shoots are about four centimetres long.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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