Pickled red onions

For some reason I bought three red onions for making the pickled nectarines, I don't know why. I don't normally use red onions in my cooking, I prefer sweet onions. So, I had a lot of left over onion that I needed to do something with.

I found a recipe for pickling them (and if you haven't realized I really do love just about everything pickled) at Closet Cooking here.

Because I had sooo much onion I chopped them up and put them in a half-gallon jar (just like I did to the nectarines, I guess it is a lucky thing that I have so many empty kimchi jars) and I quadrupled the recipe.


Both jars are cooling down on my counter right now, waiting to go into the fridge.

Spicy pickled nectarines

I found a recipe for pickling nectarines in the refrigerator by City Mama here and wanted to try it out.

The recipe calls for seven nectarines, but I could only fit four in a half-gallon jar as you can see in the picture.


I mostly just followed the directions, I used minced garlic I had frozen and I crushed the red peppers.


You can see the garlic floating at the bottom, and the onions are all on the top.

I haven't tried it yet, I just made it today.

How to cook seaweed soup (miyeok guk 미역국) redux

So, I went to the local Vietnamese store to look for the seaweed for miyeok guk 미역국, but I didn't find it there. Then last weekend I went to the Korean store in Sparks, NV, Yim's Asian Supermarket. I found the seaweed there and took some pictures with my cell phone, sorry, but they are low quality.

This is the seaweed in Korean, and written in Romanized from the Japanese pronunciation, ito-wakame.


And I believe the black writing here in the center is the Japanese name of the seaweed, I am not 100% sure, so if anyone can read it please let me know.

How to cook seaweed soup (miyeok guk 미역국)

EDIT: 3/16/2011 My mother visited last week and it was during her birthday, so I made 미역국.

My poor, often neglected blog.

If you are using a Microsft OS and cannot see the Korean characters, but you want to be able to you need to download and install the East Asian Language pack.

미역(miyeok) means seaweed/seaplant/sea vegetable. 국(guk) means soup, a broth based soup, e.g. chicken noodle soup would be considered a 국, but cream of mushroom would not.

I got the basic recipe for this from Maangchi on her page for miyuk-guk, there are many ways to romanize 미역국. Wikipedia also has a brief article and very basic recipe on their site.

So, starting with Maangchi's recipe I modified it to suit my tastes.

I forgot to take a picture of the seaweed package so you would know what kind to buy, I will try to remember to do it next time and add the picture to this post.

EDIT:5/25/11 I have pictures of the packages of seaweed now. http://homeschoolingjasmine.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-cook-seaweed-soup-miyeok-guk.html

Okay, Maangchi's recipe starts will 1 cup of dried seaweed and has you soak it for an hour, well I just took it and put it in a jar with a lid and soaked it over night, so I could start cooking right away in the morning.

I drained the seaweed.


And placed it in a large pot with 16 cups of water, like the recipe says, but I placed it on low heat so I could get the rest of the ingredients ready.


Then I took an onion and halved it, then sliced it.


Then cut the slices in half.


If you are like me you can do the other half of the onion and add it to the soup also.


I couldn't find beef brisket at the store, so I bought lean stew meat.


As you can see it is still a little fatty, so I took the pieces trimmed them down and cut them into smaller pieces.


After that I turned the heat up to get the soup to start boiling. I add half a coup of frozen sliced garlic.


I cannot remember where I read about this, but if you use a lot of garlic and would rather not use the store bought preminced or crushed garlic, you can do it yourself at home and just freeze it. I grow garlic, but I use more than I can grow, so I will also buy it from the store and peel it, slice it and put the pieces in a old water bottle and freeze them.


You can also mince the garlic and put plastic wrap on a cookie sheet, spread the garlic out on the sheet, freeze the sheet and after it is frozen cut the garlic into about 1 inch squares, which is about 2 tablespoons and put the squares into a plastic zip-loc type bag in the freezer. I wish I remember where I learned this from to give proper credit, but oh well, probably some sort of bento site. You can also do this with green onions.

I also forgot to take a picture of the fish sauce and sesame oil, to show what brands I use and I am all out of them right now, hopefully I remember to take a picture of them later.

After everything boils for about 20 minutes you are done and have a batch of seaweed soup.


I normally make a double batch and freeze most of it. If you do plan on freezing it don't add tofu. I found out the hard way that tofu does not freeze well and had to throw out a lot of soup :(

If you are wondering how kids will like this, Jasmine is 4 years-old and eats it all the time.