What is eomuk?
Eomuk (어묵) is the Korean word for fish cake. Many Koreans also say odeng, after the Japanese stew oden. The fish paste came to Korea during the Japanese colonial period, and Busan is now seen as the fish cake city of the country. At a street stall you get eomuk as thin, folded sheets on long skewers, steeping in a broth of radish and dried anchovies. You ladle the hot broth into a paper cup and drink it alongside.
Making fish cakes yourself: the principle
Store-bought fish cake is usually made of surimi, which is washed and pressed fish meat with starch, sugar and salt. At home you can do without surimi. The salt draws protein out of the muscle fibers, and the mixture turns sticky and elastic as it blends. When you fry it, this protein sets into the springy structure you know from fish cakes. Egg white and cornstarch add extra binding.
The right fish
- Works well: cod, pollock, Alaska pollock or hoki. These fish are lean and have firm, white flesh.
- Less suitable: Salmon and mackerel contain a lot of fat. The mixture binds less well, and the skewers break in the pan.
- Frozen fish: Thaw it in the fridge and pat it dry. Wet fillet makes the mixture soft.
How to get the skewers right
Keep everything cold
Cut the fillet into cubes and put it in the freezer for 15 minutes before you puree it. The blender warms the mixture, and warm fish paste binds poorly. Blend in short bursts and push the mixture together with a dough scraper in between.
Shaping
Wet your hands or rub them with a little oil. Press about 80 g of the mixture around a skewer and roll it on the board into a sausage 2 to 3 cm (about 1 in) thick. Skewers of the same thickness cook through in the same time.
Frying
Pour enough oil into the pan to cover the bottom 1 cm (1/2 in) deep and heat it over medium heat. Fry the skewers for 6 to 8 minutes, turning them every 1 to 2 minutes, until golden brown all over. If the heat is too high, the outside browns before the center is cooked. To test, cut into one skewer: inside, the mixture is white and firm.
Variations
For the street-stall version, spread the mixture 5 mm (1/4 in) thick on oiled baking paper, cut rectangles and fry them flat. Then fold the sheets in a zigzag onto long skewers and let them steep in broth for 10 minutes. The matching soup is in the recipe for Eomuk-Tang, and for the stock you need kombu and dried anchovies. For spicy skewers, stir 1 tbsp of gochugaru into the mixture. If you replace a quarter of the fish with chopped shrimp, the skewers turn sweeter.
Fish cake in ramen and tteokbokki
In Korea, eomuk ends up in many everyday dishes. Slice a skewer and add the slices to Korean instant noodles for the last 2 minutes. More ideas are collected in the article Upgrading instant noodles. In tteokbokki the fish cakes soak up the spicy sauce, and in gimbap you roll them in as strips. Japanese ramen usually gets narutomaki instead of eomuk, a fish roll with a pink spiral.
Dip and storage
For dipping, mix the soy sauce with 1 tbsp of rice vinegar and a little chopped scallion. Fried skewers keep in the fridge for 2 days. You can also freeze them and warm them from frozen in hot broth.
