In The Fourth Trimester, we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month, it’s a steaming bowl of miyeokguk from Bon Appétit deputy food editor Hana Asbrink.
Four hundred and fifty. That’s the number of consecutive days I ate the same soup. Maybe it was more. I ate it in the morning. I ate it in the evening. I ate it, hands cupped around the bowl, on the most frigid of winter days. And I ate it, with sweat-beaded brows, on the most sweltering of summer ones. I never ate it in a box or with a fox, but almost always, I ate it still in pajamas. Doesn’t that count for something?
Miyeokguk, or Korean seaweed (miyeok) soup (guk), holds great significance in Korean culture. Legend has it whales and dolphins eat lots of seaweed after giving birth. Koreans traditionally eat miyeokguk for several months postpartum, as it’s believed to purify the blood, and encourage and enhance breast milk production. Beyond this time, miyeokguk is a birthday soup for Koreans, meant to be consumed for breakfast with a steaming bowl of rice as an homage to their mothers for giving birth to them.
After I had my daughter, my mother brought a thermos of homemade miyeokguk to the hospital, my first taste of non-cafeteria food. During those ensuing days and sleepless nights of recovery, miyeokguk served as a constant. While my bleary-eyed, bloated, still-bleeding self was waiting for my milk to come in—while riding the hormonal roller coaster into the world of the “new normal”—I could at least rely on starting each day with the same meal: miyeokguk, bap, and any assortment of banchan if my mother was around; if she wasn’t, just the soup and rice, and maybe some non-spicy kimchi.
This isn’t a common length. As custom dictates, I could have stopped eating miyeokguk after just a few weeks or months. But I made the tradition my own, committing to the ritual for as long as I breastfed my daughter. It was the comfort I needed when my mother was back in Korea, my husband back at work, and I was left alone to figure out how to stay nourished and keep my tiny new nugget alive.
Whether or not you’re compelled by the lore of sea mammals enjoying a bounty of seaweed post-delivery, the fact is seaweed or sea kelp is highly nutritious, believed to be a rich source of iron, calcium, and vitamins, while also low in calories. Dried varieties keep in the pantry for months. Once you have a bag, you only need a handful of other ingredients for the soup. My recipe for miyeokguk runs pretty traditional in its flavor and is one of the versions I made for myself during those 450-plus days. (And it freezes well, if you want to make a big batch.)
Beef forms the base of miyeokguk, providing a grounding backbone to an otherwise light and briny soup. You can use beef chuck, brisket, or even ground beef—and you don’t need much at all. Sauté the meat in toasted sesame oil and minced garlic, then add rehydrated seaweed and water. Traditionally the soup is seasoned with gukganjang, literally “soup soy sauce,” which is lighter in both color and viscosity, but saltier in taste, than the standard soy sauce you’ll find in the US. Give gukganjang a try if you have access to an H Mart or other Korean or Asian grocer, but if you can’t find it, regular or low-sodium soy sauce works just fine.
In dried form, Korean miyeok are long ropes of seaweed. They are less firm than sheets of dashi konbu kelp, but firmer than seasoned seaweed snacks (and not meant to be eaten straight out of the package like those are). A little goes a long way. The strands might not look like or weigh very much, but after soaking in water, they expand like those magical bath toys in mere minutes. Using kitchen shears to cut the rehydrated miyeok into bite-size pieces is key (and a very clutch Korean mom move).
Even after eating it over and over and over, I would still happily tuck into a bowl of miyeokguk any night of the week. And I do. It is a deep source of comfort that will always tie me to those early days of motherhood with my daughter, and remind me that I’m never too far from my own mother, even when she’s thousands of miles away.
