Wicked ways to warm the Seoul.

Galbi Tang (beef rib soup)

Continuing on the theme of simple and delicious taste pleasures, there's nothing more comforting to me than a big bowl of steamy broth. Soup is one of those things that I can eat any time of the day, whether stiflingly hot and certainly when it's bitterly cold; soup is a simple pleasure that is uncompromisingly efficient in even the most mediocre of states.

Soondubu jiggae (soft tofu stew)

Soup is also a staple around Korea. Often accompanying a barbeque or Korean 'table-haute' meal free of charge, or changing the game as an intriguingly inexpensive side to your supper soup comes in many delicious and diverse variations around these parts. 

Here's just a couple tasty ones that I've enjoyed as of late [temporarily excluded are the mass amounts of ramen I've been consuming]. 

Top: Galbi Tang or Kalbi Tang is a simple yet well rounded beef rib soup. Served literally boiling hot in a deeply flavourful beef broth that's been simmered for countless hours, the tender chunks of galbi are generally laid aside so you don't scald your lips as you pull off the succulent beef and such the bones dry of their marrow. Topped with fresh enoki mushrooms, and green onion as well as what I believe to be a type of chili nut (but which tasted oddly similar to a date) and a nice pile of glass noodles at the bottom, galbi tang is an excellent lunchtime mow that will typically run you under W8,000. 

Bottom: Soondubu jjigae is a spicy robust jjigae (Korean stew) made with extra soft tofu and often various types of seafood (clams, shrimps, mussels, oysters), mushrooms and green onion. This is much more of a soup than a stew in my humble opinion but regardless of how you classify it the tastes are clean and powerful and each bite is booming with belly burning warmth. For W3,000-6,000 I be gettin' jjigae with it all the damn time!