Myeolchi-bokkeum has a way of going hard once it’s been sitting in the fridge.
Fry it too long in the sauce and it sticks to the pan, too.
So here the sauce boils for exactly 20 seconds, and the anchovies — already fried crisp — get folded into it.
It tastes like what I ate as a kid over rice with water poured on it.

At a glance

Ingredients

  • anchovies 2 handfuls
  • sauce (soy sauce2, gochujang2, oligodang3, sugar1, garlic0.5)
  • optional (sesame oil1)

Prep

  • (optional) clean the anchovies
  • fry the anchovies until golden to drive off the off-smell
  • once golden, add oil and fry once more, set aside

Cooking

  • boil the sauce first
  • anchovies in, coat them in the sauce
  • taste, add more sauce if it seems short

Ingredients

This is a make-ahead banchan, so it isn’t counted in servings. The quantities are for 200 g of anchovies.

Main

  • dried anchovies 200 g (7 oz), medium size — about two handfuls

For frying

  • cooking oil 1
  • grapeseed, olive, soybean — any of them is fine

Sauce — numbers are tablespoons (1 tbsp = 15 ml)

  • soy sauce 2, gochujang 2, oligodang 3, sugar 1, garlic 0.5
  • sesame oil 1 — optional

Medium dried anchovies (jung-myeol) are sold at Korean groceries, usually in the freezer case.
Oligodang is a Korean oligosaccharide syrup. Light corn syrup or rice syrup substitutes directly.
Gochujang is Korean fermented chili paste, at H Mart or online.

Banchan are the small dishes that sit on the table alongside rice through the whole meal. This one keeps, so it gets made in a batch and brought out for days.

Prep

  • (Optional) Pull the heads and guts off the anchovies.
  • Put the anchovies alone into a dry pan and fry 20 seconds over high heat. No oil, no sauce.
  • Once they’re golden, add cooking oil 1 and fry them once more.
  • Set the fried anchovies aside.

Cooking

  • Put the sauce into the hot pan and boil it 20 seconds on low heat. No water.
  • Add the anchovies you set aside and fold them through, coating them.
  • Taste, and add a little more sauce if it’s short.
  • Turn off the heat, then add sesame oil 1.

Notes

You’re tossing, not frying

Myeolchi-bokkeum goes hard mostly because it was fried too long in the sauce.
Here the sauce boils 20 seconds on low, and the crisp anchovies get folded into a hot pan and that sauce.
It’s closer to tossing than frying.
Nothing burns, and it doesn’t harden once it cools.

The dry 20 seconds is about freezer smell

Anchovies usually live in the freezer, and after a while they pick up the smell of it along with a stale note.
Twenty seconds in a dry pan over high heat, no oil and no sauce, is the step that drives that off.
Only after that do you add the oil and fry them again.

Oligodang 3 and sugar 1 do different jobs

There are two sweet ingredients here, and they split the work.
The oligodang brings sweetness and stickiness — it’s what makes the sauce cling to the anchovies.
Since this method coats rather than simmers, that side gets the larger share.
The sugar is what carries the sauce flavor into the anchovy itself. Hence 3 and 1.

For another dish to eat with rice, there’s Mugeunji Jjageuri.