Do you have seasonal foods, desserts and salads you like? A lot of my friends do. But it seems like I do not really have that kind of division. I can eat herring during the hottest summer day or I can make Kuksi and Go’ja in the middle of the stormy winter.
The recipe I am about to present is exactly the type, which you are supposed to eat in summer. Each ingredient is served in separate dishes, so that everyone can put as much of the stuff they want in their individual bowls of soy soup.
Kuksi is very refreshing and too addictive :) Easy to prepare and very delicious. A must try recipe!
Kuksi is Korean food, but I couldn’t find much information about it on the web. All I know is that Korean people in Uzbekistan used to make it frequently and Uzbeks love it, too (that is if they have ever tried it :D)
Yield: 6 servings
Prep. and cook time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 (1/2) pack of rice sticks OR half pack of angel hair pasta
- 10 Tbsp of soy sauce or less (proportion of soy sauce really varies due to personal preference)
- 2 cups of green cabbage thinly cut (into 1 cm cubes)
- ½ onion chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic minced
- 1 medium tomato (half diced, half grated)
- 1/3 tsp of Sriracha chili sauce (or any substitute)
- 1 medium cucumber peeled
- ¼ cup cilantro chopped
- 4 eggs
- 8 oz of lean beef or lamb julienned
- oil/canola/olive oil
- salt, pepper, sesame seeds
- Water: boiled(cooled)/filtered/bottled for the soy soup
Directions:
Heat the skillet. Add couple of tbsps of oil of your choice. Dice half of a tomato and in medium heat saute it with chopped onions. Add chili sauce, cabbage, pinch of salt and half of the minced garlic. Saute well and add ½ cup of water. Mix a couple of times, turn the heat down to medium low and close the lid of the skillet for 5 minutes. When time is up, move the skillet from the stove but keep the lid closed until you transfer the ready cabbage to the serving dish. Cabbage should not be well cooked or overcooked. It should retain some crisp.
Whisk eggs well with a pinch of salt. Brush your non-stick pan (crepe pan) with little amount of oil, and on medium low heat make thin egg pancakes. Usually, I make around 6 pancakes. Make individual rolls from each pancake and set them aside to cool (you can make lose rolls or tight rolls; it is totally up to you). Once they are cool enough to handle, without opening the rolls cut the pancakes in 1 cm circles. Place them on a separate serving dish.
Cut a cucumber in four halves vertically. Keep each half horizontal and slice thinly. In a mixing bowl mix ready cucumbers, chopped cilantro, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of oil, the remaining minced garlic and 1 tsp of sesame seeds. Transfer to a serving dish.
On medium heat stir fry the meat until golden brown. Add salt, pepper (I add some cumin, too) to your own taste and also add ½ cup of water. Close the lid of the skillet, turn the heat down to medium-low and keep it like that for good 10 minutes. Check if the meat is well cooked, add ½ tbsp of sesame seeds, mix and transfer to a serving dish.
Cook the rice sticks following the package directions. If you are using angel hair pasta, boil the water in a large pan and add pasta (basically, follow the directions on the box, or a package). Make sure it doesn’t get overcooked. Take out the pasta and immediately rinse with cold water. Pre-portion noodles in bowls half full.
In order to prepare the soup for the Kuksi I measure the water with the soup bowl I am going to be serving for the dish. If there are only 3 people (and yes, three of us eat 2 portions each) I take 3 bowls of water in soup server. Add 8 tbsp of soy sauce (add as much as you like) into the water. The color should be medium brown. Peel and grate the remaining tomato into the soup. If you would like, add a little vinegar, mix everything with a spoon and the soup is ready.
Serving:
Pour some soup in the bowls so that the liquid covers the noodles. You can either let everyone put their own ingredients or you can do it for them by adding a spoon full of every ingredient side by side. Serve with additional sesame seeds and offer soy sauce if anyone wants to add more.
Enjoy!
Very interesting recipe. I had several types of “kuksi” but never one with cabbage. I shall try to cook by your recipe this weekend! :) Keep it up “Kelinka”!
Good day Hilola!
thanks for the recipe. And the photo is perfect as always. May I ask you to put some info and photos of the process of taking such excellent photos?
Regards
Webmonster, thank you very much! I am thinking of adding a little tutorial for taking food pictures (as we do it). Next time we take pictures of food, I will make sure to include that (that is if MegaZ agrees to help me out). Also, we decided to take step by step pictures. Some steps are just too hard to deliver with words. Extend my regards to Yenge :)
Joha amaqi, try it out. We really love it. Especially MegaZ. I got this recipe from our Korean friends. They use angel hair pasta though (I like it, too). They say Uzbeks associate Korean food with rice noodles. Hence, they put rice noodles in every korean food they know :D My friend’s mom says, very thin pasta is the way to go.
Hilola, ty geroy :)! Ya tak dolgo hotela prigotovit kuksi, tolko ne znala kak. I vot, sluchayno uvidela chto ty tut postavila etot recept! Spasibo :). Ya segodnya prigotovila kuksi – poluchilos super! U nas bil priyatel muzha – obzavidovalsya kakaya u Zarko zhena povar, hehehe :). A Zarko sam skazal chtoby ya pochashe k tebe zaglyadivala na website, hahahahah :). Eshe raz skazhu – Nasimu povezlo :)!
Ksumchik, kuksi konechno obaldennaya vesh’ :) Mi raz v nedelyu tochno gotovim. Ya ochen’ rada, chto vam ponravilos’.
Pomnish meey mami cherniy tort (Mami Nazokat)? Segodnya budem delat’ ego. Dumayu smogu step by step postavit’. Ya uverena vam ponravitsya. Delaetsya ochen’ legko. Celuyu,
H
etot tort voobshe semeynaya vesh Mansurovih starshego pokoleniya :))) – ego delayut vse zheni bratyev Mansurovih (Ahata, Yulbarsa i Asada) i ochen lyubim detmi etih Mansurovih, hehe :). Ya obozhayu ego, pravda sama nikogda ne delala… Kazhetsya prishlo vremya nauchitsya i etomu :). Davay, budu zhdat step-by-step guide s fotografiyami!
What a great looking soup!
it tastes great, too :)
Hilola!Kuksini resipti uchun rahmat.Tayorlab ko’rdim juda mazali chiqdi…
Yoqimli ishtaha. Kechroq ko’rib qolibman kommentingizni, yoqimli ishtaha bo’lib, yuz marta hazim ham bo’lib bo’lgandur :P
Lola–FINAMENAL’NO–nakonets-to ja nashel etot ritsept KUKSI–spasibo ogromnoe–MARHAMAT SISGJA :) V Amerike bilo ochen’ tjazhelo naiti etot ritsept.
Daniel, priyatnogo appetita :) Skoro sdleayu step-by-step fotki. Tak dumayu budet ponyatney. Zahodite po chashshe! Dayte mne znat’ esli est’ kakie recepti, o kotorih vi bi hoteli uznat’ po bol’she. S udovol’sviem napishu!
Yum! This sounds like a really good summer meal- especially as it’s so so hot right now!!
oh yeah!! You can bet on that :) But we love it anytime of the year.
Thank you for visiting my blog, Von!
Lolochka, I think you should republish your first recipes by adding step by step pictures to them, like you are doing in your later ones. Because (for example) when I just read a recipe I don’t know how hard it will be to replicate it, and if I do it in the right way. You know like when you read any Food magazine, you see the nice final picture, but chances you will make this dish are not high. But when I look you your step by step pictures, the whole process seems pretty easy and cool and I want to try it. You see how your pictures really help? (Sorry for using word “pictures” for 100 times :))
Looks beautiful!!! And in Korea similar dish is called “Guksu” You can google it and find more info :)
Ok, so I’m really craving Kuksi and of course none of the Korean restaurants in NYC serve it. None that is, except one. Of course it the Korean-Uzbek restaurant on Brighton “U Teshi”. Her Kuksi is Out-of-this-World delicious! Born in Tashkent I really love kuksi but can’t make it myself. So, I really wonder why Kuksi is more Uzbek-Korean food and not a true Korean food. Additionally, in my search of Kuksi in korean restaurants, I came across a dish that resembles kuksi a lot, only there’s rice instead of noodles and no broth. It’s bibimbop (or Bi Bim Bop) I wonder if kuksi is a variation of bibimbop, Thanks for the recipe!
My favorite soup EVER. I have so much cravings for this one all year long! My husband and mother-in-law cooked it for me, and now that I am divorced, I still want it! :-) I tried yours for the first time last summer, and I was so pleased… Same taste, same recipe. Just perfect. Thank you so much! Summer is there since yesterday, and I am ready for it!