The ladle goes in before you have asked for anything. At a market stall on a cold night, the vendor dips into a wide, shallow pot, fills a paper cup to just below the rim, and sets it on the counter in front of you, steam rising off it in a thick, slow column. The smell reaches you through the cold air a second later, anchovy and something faintly sweet, the smell of Korean fish cake soup that has been simmering since the afternoon. You haven't bought a thing yet. The broth came first.
Eomuk-guk is Korean fish cake soup, a clear, savory broth in which sheets of pressed fish cake are folded, threaded onto long skewers, and left to soak. At a street stall it is less a bowl than a system: the skewers sit in the pot, you pick one out and eat it standing up, and a cup of that broth comes with it. Most Koreans still call the fish cake odeng.
If the paper bag of a bungeoppang warms your hands, the paper cup warms the rest of you. That is the half of the Korean winter street you drink. It begins at the counter, with a pot that never seems to empty.
Korean Fish Cake Soup, Up Close
Korean fish cake soup is easiest to understand at a market stall. A low pot of broth takes up most of the counter, skewers of fish cake fanned around the edge like the spokes of a wheel, each one folded back and forth on itself so it looks like a ribbon. In the next pan, tteokbokki, chewy rice cakes in red chili sauce, bubbles thick and slow, and sundae, Korean blood sausage, waits in a steamer beside it. People stand shoulder to shoulder, nobody sitting, and nobody orders: they walk up, pull a skewer straight out of the pot, and start eating before a word is said. You pay at the end, when the vendor counts your empty sticks, a system that tends to startle visitors and runs almost entirely on trust.
The cup is the part nobody writes on a menu. It has long been treated as something the stall simply gives you, refilled from the ladle as often as you hold it out, and it is why the stall is crowded on the coldest nights, even with people who only came for one skewer. A cup of hot broth in a gloved hand, on a night like that, is a kind of welcome.
Watch the pot for an hour and you will see most of a neighborhood pass through it. Schoolkids come with their backpacks still on, splitting one skewer between two. Office workers stop on the way to the subway, and some come back hours later for a cup of broth they swear is for their stomach. A grandmother halfway through her market shopping sets her bags down, drinks a cup without taking off her gloves, and moves on.
Later still, the same fish cake moves under a tarp. In a pojangmacha, the tented street bar, odeng-tang arrives as a whole steaming pot in the middle of the table, skewers leaning against the rim, and it is there less as dinner than as company for a bottle of soju, a spoonful of broth between each small glass. It is the market stall's broth, only slower, and shared.
The word for what you are eating has two lives. Odeng was borrowed from Japanese oden, a simmered dish of fish cakes and other ingredients, and the standard Korean word is eomuk, but at the stall most people still say odeng, and nobody corrects them. Busan, the southern port city, is the name most Koreans connect with it. Its fish cake tradition took root under Japanese colonial rule and boomed when refugees poured into the city during the Korean War, and Busan eomuk became, by the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture's account, a byword for fish cake across the country.
I should admit my bias. I love odeng, the chewy Busan kind most of all, and I do not save it for winter. In my neighborhood market there is a fish cake shop whose pot, as far as I can tell, has not stopped boiling on a single day of the year, and in August I am at its counter anyway, sweating, picking skewers out of the steam. Winter only means the rest of the city finally joins me.
Pick up a package at any Korean market and you'll find fish cake in more shapes than you expected: flat sheets for folding onto skewers, round rods, little balls, square sheets flecked with vegetables. The difference that matters to me is texture. The ones I like best carry more fish and less starch, and you can feel it in the bite, springy, almost bouncy, with a chew that holds its shape in the broth instead of going soft.
Stand at enough stalls and you learn that no two pots are made the same way. Some vendors simmer their own broth from anchovy, kelp, and radish, and a few drop in crab; many others start from a concentrate, the commercial fish cake broth bases sold by the jug to street stalls and snack bars, and adjust it to taste. Nobody at the stall will tell you which, and by evening it matters less than you would think. Some stalls keep a second pot of spicy odeng, fish cakes steeped in a red, chili-hot broth until they take on the color of tteokbokki — not its thick sauce, but a thinner, fierier broth that soaks all the way in. And many slip in mul-tteok, water rice cake: sticks of garaetteok, long rice cake, threaded on skewers and left in the broth until they turn soft and slippery, a habit most closely tied to Busan, and the thing I order right after my first skewer.
Still, the broth tells you everything about the stall, and it is why every neighborhood has one or two stalls known for their broth alone. I always taste it before the fish cake, plain, off the edge of the paper cup — the way I'd nose a wine before tilting the glass. From scratch or from a jug, it should be clean and savory, the sea at the front, then a gentle sweetness that comes from the fish cakes themselves, hours of them giving a little of their fat and starch back to the pot; when it is right, it has length, a quiet finish that lingers after the swallow. There is no recipe on the wall here, no name on the pot. Just the ladle, and tonight's broth.
At home, fish cake leads a quieter life. Eomuk-bokkeum, strips of fish cake stir-fried with soy sauce, a little sugar, and onion, is one of the most familiar banchan, the small side dishes of a Korean table, and for a generation it was one of the dishes most likely to turn up in a school lunchbox. Ask Koreans how their mother made it and most can tell you exactly: glossy or spicy, with green chili or without.
None of this needs a stall. A pot of broth and a bag of fish cakes from a Korean grocery are enough to bring the corner home. But first, eat the way the stall does, one skewer and one cup at a time.
The First Taste
The skewer is heavier than it looks. You lift it out of the pot and the broth runs down the stick toward your fingers, so you tilt it, quickly, and bite the top fold first. The fish cake is soft and springy, a little chewy, mild and savory, soaked through with the pot. It tastes of the sea, but gently.
Take a sip from the cup, then another bite. The rhythm sets itself: fold, sip, fold, sip, until the stick is bare. If there is a small bowl of soy sauce on the counter, dip the last fold in it and let the salt wake the broth up. Hold out the cup. The ladle comes back without a word.
Then reach for the mul-tteok. The rice cake has sat in the pot so long it has gone soft and slippery, and it stretches a little as you bite, carrying the broth in with it. Chew slowly.
If there is a red pot, take one skewer from it last. The heat arrives slowly, more in the throat than on the tongue, and the next cup of plain broth tastes sweeter for it.
The real reason this works is the cup. The fish cake fills you, but the broth is what warms you, from the inside out, long after the stick is bare. Ten minutes later, you are holding an empty paper cup and a fistful of bare sticks. The cold is still there. It just doesn't reach you anymore.
In Your Kitchen
Fish cake soup is the easiest street food to make at home, because the broth does the work and the fish cakes are sold frozen at almost any Korean grocery in the United States. The broth is where a little care pays off. For about four cups, drop three or four of Trunas's → seafood stock tablets, made with anchovy, kelp, and radish, into a pot of cold water. Add a palm-sized piece of → Gijang kelp, from the coast just north of Busan, and a handful of thinly sliced Korean radish.
- The broth. Bring the water, tablets, kelp, and radish to a gentle simmer over medium heat and cook 10 minutes. Lift out the kelp before it turns slick and bitter.
- The fish cakes. Rinse them under hot water first to wash off excess frying oil, so the broth stays clear. Fold each sheet of fish cake back and forth into a ribbon and thread it onto a wooden skewer, or simply cut it into strips. Simmer 5 minutes, until the fish cakes puff and soften.
- The finish. Season with a teaspoon of Korean soup soy sauce at a time, add a handful of sliced scallion, and serve with a small dish of soy sauce for dipping.
To make it the way the counters do, thread a few sticks of garaetteok onto skewers and add them for the last 5 minutes, and you have mul-tteok; Kim'C Market's → garaetteok comes in five natural colors, which makes for a prettier pot. For spicy odeng, ladle some broth into a second pan with a spoonful of gochugaru and simmer a few fish cakes there until they turn red.
Pour the broth into mugs, not bowls, and drink it standing at the stove at least once. Leftover soup keeps two days in the refrigerator; the fish cakes soften as they sit, so add fresh ones when you reheat.
Any fish cakes left in the bag make eomuk-bokkeum, the lunchbox side dish. Cut them into strips and stir-fry with half a sliced onion, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sugar or rice syrup, and a few drops of sesame oil for about 3 minutes, until glossy. It keeps four days in the refrigerator and tastes just as good cold.
The Broth Comes With It
What the Korean winter street really offers at that counter is not the fish cake. It is the cup — a small, hot gift handed across a counter to anyone standing in the cold, refilled without a question, rarely on any bill. It makes the coldest weeks of the year feel looked after, one ladle at a time. Make a pot of broth this winter, pour it into a cup, and hand the first one to someone else.
FAQ
What is Korean fish cake soup? Korean fish cake soup, eomuk-guk, is a clear, savory broth simmered with sheets of pressed fish cake, often folded onto skewers. At street stalls, the skewers soak in a pot of hot, savory broth, and customers eat them standing up with a paper cup of that broth on the side. At home it is a quick soup, made with radish, kelp, and scallions. It is one of the most familiar winter street foods in Korea.
Is odeng the same as eomuk? Odeng and eomuk refer to the same Korean fish cake in everyday speech. The word odeng was borrowed from Japanese oden, a simmered dish of fish cakes and other ingredients, while eomuk is the standard Korean word. Most Koreans still say odeng at a street stall, especially for fish cake on skewers. On packaging and menus you will see both.
What does Korean fish cake soup taste like? Korean fish cake soup tastes clean, savory, and lightly sweet, with the sea at the front and a soft sweetness from the fish cakes themselves. It is mild rather than spicy, and the fish cake is springy and gently chewy. A little soy sauce for dipping sharpens it. It is closer to a light seafood broth than to a heavy chowder.
What kinds of Korean fish cake are there? Korean fish cake comes in flat sheets, round rods, small balls, and vegetable-studded squares, all made from ground fish pressed and cooked into shape. Flat sheets are the ones folded onto skewers for street soup and sliced for eomuk-bokkeum, the stir-fried side dish. Fish cakes with a higher proportion of fish tend to be springier and chewier, and Busan-style fish cake is the best-known name. Check the ingredient list: fish should come first.
Can I make Korean fish cake soup at home without special ingredients? Korean fish cake soup can be made at home with frozen fish cakes from a Korean grocery and a simple broth. The fastest base is a seafood stock tablet dissolved in water, deepened with a piece of dried kelp and a few slices of radish. Kim'C Market carries Trunas seafood stock tablets and Gijang kelp, which together make a broth close to the street version in about 15 minutes.
When is Korean fish cake soup in season? Korean fish cake soup is eaten year-round, but its street season runs from late autumn through winter, roughly November to February. That is when the market counters are busiest and the paper cups of broth are poured fastest. Bungeoppang carts and roasted sweet potato drums appear on the same streets in the same weeks. The colder the night, the longer the line.