Stews & Soups
Galbitang (Beef Short Rib Soup)
Prep
70 min
Cook
120 min
Servings
4
Photo: debbietingzon · CC BY 2.0
Steps
- 1
Soak the short ribs in cold water 1 hour, changing the water twice, to draw out blood.
- 2
Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the ribs, and boil hard 5 minutes.
- 3
Drain and discard that water completely, then rinse the ribs and the pot.
- 4
Return the ribs to the clean pot with fresh water, onion and garlic, and simmer 1 hour, skimming foam.
- 5
Add the radish chunks and simmer another 30 minutes until the meat pulls easily from the bone.
- 6
Remove the onion and season the broth with soy sauce, salt and pepper.
- 7
Add the soaked noodles and cook 3 minutes.
- 8
Ladle into bowls and top with green onion and egg garnish.
Did you know — Korean culture
Korean has two words for soup and they are not interchangeable. Guk is the everyday one, the bowl that sits beside rice at any meal. Tang is the more formal register, generally reserved for richer, longer-simmered soups you would serve a guest or cook for an occasion. Galbitang takes the honorific word, and the two hours of simmering is the reason why.
The soak and the parboil are two separate steps, and skipping either one shows up in the bowl. The cold-water soak draws residual blood out of the bone; the hard five-minute boil that follows lifts the scum that would otherwise cloud the broth. That first pot of water gets thrown away entirely - it looks wasteful the first time, and it is exactly what separates a clear galbitang from a grey one.
After that, the cooking is mostly patience. Short ribs need a genuine long simmer for the connective tissue to give way, and rushing it at a hard boil emulsifies the fat into the broth and clouds it again. A low, lazy simmer with the foam skimmed as it rises keeps the liquid clean while the meat softens.
The radish goes in late for a reason. Korean radish turns sweet and almost translucent with about half an hour of simmering, but keep it in for the full two hours and it collapses into the broth and turns woolly. Added at the right point it sweetens the soup and stays intact enough to eat.
Troubleshooting
Broth cloudy or grey? You either skipped the parboil or kept the first water. Boil hard 5 minutes, discard that water completely, and start again with fresh.
Meat still tough after an hour? Short ribs vary. Keep simmering and test every 20 minutes - it is done when the meat retreats from the bone on its own, not at a fixed time.
Radish falling apart? It went in too early. Add it in the last 30 minutes rather than at the start.