Walnuts in Korean Cooking (Hodu)

Walnuts appear across Korean cooking in small but specific roles: candied as a banchan, folded into yaksik, ground into porridge, and lending their name to hodu-gwaja, the walnut-shaped cakes of Cheonan.

They are rarely the main event. Where they show up, they are usually providing bitterness and fat against something sweet.

Blanch them before candying

Walnut skin holds tannins that turn harsh under sugar and heat. For hodu-jorim — the candied walnut banchan — blanch the halves in boiling water for a minute or two and drain before they go into the syrup.

Skipping this is the usual reason home-made candied walnuts taste astringent rather than sweet.

Toast for depth, but watch them

A few minutes in a dry pan or low oven brings out the oil and deepens the flavour, which is worth doing before folding them into rice dishes.

Walnuts have a high oil content and go from toasted to burnt quickly. Pull them while they still smell nutty rather than sharp.

Where they turn up

Yaksik — with chestnuts and jujubes in sweet glutinous rice.

Hodu-jorim — candied in soy and syrup as a keeping banchan.

Juk — ground into porridge, sometimes with pine nuts, as a rich breakfast.

Hodu-gwaja — where a walnut piece sits inside each cake.

Storing them

Walnuts go rancid faster than most nuts because of their oil, and rancid walnut is unmistakably bitter.

Keep them in the freezer in a sealed bag rather than a cupboard. They will hold a year that way and can be used straight from frozen. If a walnut tastes bitter and slightly of paint, the batch has turned.