Seasoned acorn jelly

Hi everybody!

Dotori … dotori … dotorimuk-muchim recipe is here! : )

Dotorimuk is made from acorns. Some people in Korea still make homemade dotorimuk from scratch, using acorns that they gathered or picked  from the mountain. The traditional way to make acorn jelly is to shell, dry, and powder the acorns, then mix them with water to remove the bitter and astringent taste. The starch will sink to the bottom, so the next day you should discard the bitter water on top and pour new water in. This is repeated for many days until  the starch is not bitter anymore. Then you make porridge with this starch mixture.

Can you make your own dotorimuk from scratch? I’d like to try it, but I’m afraid that when gathering the acorns in the mountain that squirrels will give me a dirty look. : )

It’s a lot of effort to make acorn jelly powder from scratch, but luckily the powder can be found easily at any Korean grocery store, and the quality is usually just the same.

My mungbean jelly recipe is very popular, so I think this dotorimuk-muchim recipe will also be popular. All the people who came to my recent Meetup event and tasted my dotorimuk-muchim will love it. They ate every last piece!

I use only ½ cup powder in this recipe but I used 5 cups of the powder to serve more than 50 people who came to the meetup. It was a huge amount of acorn porridge to make! If you have a big party and are looking for an appetizer recipe, I think dotorimuk-muchim is a great choice because you can make the jelly and the yangnyeomjang (sauce) in advance and demonstrate your mixing in front of people at the party just as I did in my video.

I have a funny story about dotorimuk. When I lived in Korea, my friend  had a German guest who was a food scientist. She invited him to her house for dinner. She made a bunch of different Korean dishes to impress him. One of the dishes was dotorimuk-muchim. A few days after she had the guest, she called me and said: “The German guest said I should add some chocolate to the dotorimuk I made!”  : )

We laughed together but it also made sense because this person had never tasted dotorimuk in his life, so he might have expected it to taste sweet because it looks like creamy chocolate. I may get the same question from some of my readers now. My answer is: “Go ahead and make your favorite dessert with dotorimuk powder!”

Some of my readers have surprised me by using apples, Nutella, and peanut butter as filling for hoddeok. They said it turned out so delicious. If the food turns out delicious, then it means your experiment was a success, don’t you think so? : )

Ingredients

For dotorimuk

• ½ cup acorn jelly powder (dotori mukgaru)
• 3 cups water
• ½ ts salt

For the seasoning sauce

• ⅓ cup soy sauce
• 2 ts honey or sugar
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 stalks of green onions, chopped
• 1 tbs hot pepper flakes
• 1 tbs and 2 ts toasted sesame oil
• 1 tbs toasted sesame seeds, add right before serving so they don’t lose their crispiness
• garnish with shredded red pepper (silgochu)

For the vegetables, you can use

• 2 cups lettuce cut into bite size pieces
• ¼ cup onion, sliced thinly
• 1 cup’s worth edible chrysanthemum (ssukgat), cut into bite size
• 3-5 perilla leaves, chopped
• 2 tbs worth carrot, shredded
• ½ cup’s worth cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1 red chili pepper, chopped
• 1 green chili pepper, chopped

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for dotorimuk. Stir with a wooden spoon and strain to remove any lumps. Pour the mixture into a thick bottomed pot and stir over medium heat about 7-8 minutes until it bubbles.
   
   
   
2. Lower the heat and stir another 5 minutes.
3. Pour the mixture into a rectangular glass container and let it cool down.
   
4. Put it into the fridge for about 4-7 hours until it’s solid.
5. Create the seasoning sauce by combining soy sauce, sugar or honey, hot pepper flakes, garlic, and sesame oil in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
6. Take the acorn jelly out of the fridge. Turn the glass container upside down over your cutting board so the solidified jelly slides out in one piece. Cut into bite sized pieces 2 inch x 1 inch and ¼ inch thick.
   *tip: Use a crinkle cutter to make a nice wavy pattern on each piece of jelly
    
7. Put all the vegetables in a large bowl. Mix with the seasoning sauce by hand.
8. Add the dotorimuk and gently mix it all together.
9. Transfer to a serving plate. Sprinkle sesame seeds over top and serve.