Dried pollack?

At the Korean Grocery store yesterday, I found this packet with one moderate size dried fish. In a hunger daze, I bought it... now what do I do with it?

Sure, it looks 'fun' and would work well for hammering nails or bludgeoning burglars, but I was thinking of eating it instead.

When I asked the Mom of the Mom and Pop style shop how do I cook Dried Pollack, she replied 'Just Cook!' Do I soak it first, I asked. And she replied 'just Cook!" Over and over again, 'Just COOK!'

I'm guessing it's my lack of Korean language combined with her fatigue at wide eyed Westerners viewing her traditional food as an exotic novelty. Anyway, I have no idea what 'just cook' entails when it comes to a whole (but thankfully gutted) dried fish.

So how do I 'just cook' a whole dried pollack? Do I soak it first? Cram it dry in the oven with some potatoes? The fish has the head on, tail on, even some scales on; only the guts are gone.

trampledbygeese
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4 Comments

trampledbygeese August 15, 2014
Hangover cure, eh?

Guess it's a good thing I bought that home-made korean rice wine/beer mix at the same time. Just add cooked rice and water... a few days later, strain it and bottle.

Marniading sounds yummy. I'll need a bigger pan to fry it whole - but maybe I can trim the tail and head for some sort of broth, then marinade and fry the body. Any thoughts on how long to marinade?

Love the video. How do I go from whole fish to shredded bits of fish? Soak it first then shred it? I'm seriously considering buying a second fish to keep next to my bed in case of burglars. I imagine there aren't many criminals that can stand up to a grumpy fish wielding girl in her jim jams.

This fish was pretty affordable, so if it's yummy, I'm going to buy a bunch for my Earthquake Emergency kit. Then again, they have these massive packets of dry squid. I like fresh and cooked squid, so dry squid must be yummy too...right?

Thanks for the tips. Looking forward to fish dinner tomorrow.
 
Susan W. August 15, 2014
I've only seen it pan fried cut in pieces. I think the marinade is a very quick (as in no longer than ten minutes) process. Also, it can be marinated and then frozen (before cooking) so you can pull pieces out as needed.

You should google around in case I am wrong, but my memory tells me that even though it's dried, it should be frozen in dried state if kept for any length of time. That sounds weird, but I remember reading or hearing that somewhere.
 
HalfPint August 15, 2014
I've only seen dried pollock used in Korean dried pollock soup, http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/bugeoguk
 
Susan W. August 15, 2014
That's a funny story. It's usually used to make a "Korean hangover" soup. You can also soak it in water for ten minutes or so to reconstitute it, clean it up, marinate it in soy, ginger, sesame oil etc. and then pan fry it. Some of them have a lot of bones and some don't, so watch for those.
 
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