Words by The Chef Ciaran Hickey
When the full blast of the summer heat hits, many Koreans head for their Cold Noodles. These come in a few shapes and sizes, but the most popular has to be Naengmyeon (냉면). Made with buckwheat flour and potato starch, these are well-known to expats in Korea, so I decided to take a look around to find out what else is on offer.
Looking for other ways to cool down during the hot summer days? Check out our survival guide for summer in Korea
Kimchi Mari Cold Noodles
In Myeongdong, I tried kimchi mari (김치말이), a wheat noodle dish with acorn jelly, seaweed, lettuce leaves and kimchi among other ingredients.
It has a great spicy broth, bits of cucumber and hard boiled egg. A similar dish is kimchi Mari-Bap (김치말이밥), which is rice instead of noodles in the same chilled spicy broth.
Jungguk Naengmyeon
My second evening out and about brought me to Jungguk Naengmyeon (중국냉면), cold noodles. This dish was great, and I just wish I could find it closer to my apartment. It’s a milky soup into which Chinese noodles (the same as in Jjajang Myeon) are added.
The cold noodles soup is made from chicken stock, peanut pure, scallions and ginger. It’s a little heavier than other cold noodle dishes, but the peanuts give a great flavor, a little like Balinese satay sauce. The one I ordered had tomatoes, cucumber and dark chicken meat mixed in. This was my absolute favorite of all the noodle dishes I had!
Kongguksu
Another cold noodle dish is Kongguksu (콩국수). For this beauty, cold somen noodles are put in a soybean soup. When I had it, there were also tomato slices, scallions and cucumber on top of it. It tasted like a good nutty milkshake. While this sweet cold noodles dish is usually made from scratch with boiled, peeled, and blended soybeans, it is sometimes made using soy milk. Naturally, the chef in me wanted to start adding all kinds of stuff to it.
Hamheung Naengmyeon
The last stop on my noodle tour was to Namdaemun to have Hamheung Naengmyeun (함흥냉면), another northern dish. This cold noodles dish is made of noodles and hongeo (홍어), Korea’s love-it-or-hate-it fermented skate. The fish was sliced into thin strips and tossed with a Gochujang-based sauce containing, among other things, powerade! It had the usual mix of eggs and cucumbers, and I managed a little purely for research purposes. The hot sauce took some of the sting out of the fish and a beer took care of the rest.
As long as it’s still baking outside, go out and slurp down a few of these noodle dishes.