The Soon Do Bu Project

This past week I picked up the ingredients to make my own Soon Do Bu and today was da day to try it out. I kinda followed this recipe from the Korean Cuisine blog.

The recipe calls for dried anchovies and dashima to make your broth, but co-worker Julie gave me some of the same in a powdered version that she made herself. I threw it in 6 cups of water and boiled.
In a separate frying pan I fried 3 T red pepper in about 1/2 cup of sesame oil until bubbling. Then I took it off the heat.
In yet another pot a sauteed some garlic and sesame oil and then threw in about a pound of ground pork. Then I threw in 1 1/2 cups of kim chee, some kim chee juice and some onions.
I poured the broth through a strainer then added it and the pepper oil to the ground pork mixture. I only added 2 cups of the broth and half of the oil. The recipe said that the tofu would release a lot of water and it didn't really look like I needed all 6 cups so I figured I'd add more broth later if it needed it. I also didn't want to put in too much of the pepper oil in case it got too spicy. At the end, I never did add the extra in.

I wasn't sure what "shrimp jut" was. This is the closest thing I could find. When I opened the jar though, I just couldn't bring myself to add the 3 T I figured I needed. It just looked too weird. So I just put in 1 T.
Finally, I added in the tofu and the shiitake mushrooms.

This is the final product . . . my own Soon Do Bu. The taste was there, and so was the spiciness. I did work up a sweat eating it. I was just small kine disappointed though, 'cause it turned out more soupy than stewy.