Many variations

Strikingly, each of the new Korean cookbooks has a slightly different recipe for sundubu. Joo says her favorite uses seafood, called haemul sundubu, but the sundubu recipe in her book is vegetarian and starts with a mushroom stock. Sundubu typically starts with anchovy stock, made from dried anchovies available in Asian grocery stores, though beef and chicken stock also can be used. Maangchi, who gained fame for her YouTube videos of Korean cooking, uses chicken stock in her recipe.

The distinctive ingredient is tofu, of course, the softest tofu you’ve ever seen. In Asian grocery stores, you can find it in tubes and, if it’s from South Korea, it’s actually labeled sundubu. The silken tofu in mainstream grocery stores will also do.

When I first tried sundubu, I added the egg and waited for the soup to cool down a bit before taking my first spoonful. Mine was the seafood kind, filled with whole, unpeeled shrimp, clams and oysters as well as zucchini and mushrooms. In typical Korean fashion, it came with a bowl of rice on the side and several more side dishes, called banchan, including kimchi, corn and seaweed.

The first few spoonfuls were hot, in both temperature and spiciness, and my brow quickly broke a sweat. But even for a then 40-something raised in small-town Iowa, the spiciness was manageable. And a few spoonfuls later, those chili flakes combined with the seafood and vegetables so deliciously that I found myself eating as fast as I could.

From its intimidating start and incredible middle, sundubu has one more surprise.

“It has a deep, rich flavor but it finishes lightly,” Ha said.

Joo said the vegetables that get mixed in with the broth pack sundubu with umami.

“It can get so cold in Korea that I think the food took on a hugs-you-back type of feeling to it,” she says. “When you really want to get warmed up, there is something that is so cozy about sundubu. To me, it’s the ultimate comfort food.”