Dwaeji Gukbap Recipe: Hearty Korean Pork and Rice Soup

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Stepping out of Busan Station on a cold, grey morning, the first thing that hits you isn’t the salty ocean breeze—it is the rich, comforting vapor rising from giant stainless steel cauldrons lining the food alleys. Busan is the undisputed capital of dwaeji gukbap (pork and rice soup), a dish born out of hardship during the Korean War when refugees combined prized pork scraps with boiling water to feed hungry families. Today, it stands as one of Korea’s ultimate comfort foods: a piping hot bowl of clean, rich pork broth served over rice, loaded with paper-thin slices of tender pork, and seasoned right at the table to your personal taste.

When people outside Korea try making this at home, they often run into two extremes. Either they attempt to boil heavy pork leg bones for eighteen hours like a commercial restaurant—turning their kitchen into a steam room—or they end up with a watery, slightly gamey broth that tastes like plain boiled meat. In my family, we make home-style dwaeji gukbap by focusing on pork shoulder and belly rather than pure bone extraction. This method gives you a deeply savory, milky broth with succulent meat in under two hours, using ingredients you can find at any regular supermarket.

Why This Works

• Blanching cleans the profile: Parboiling the pork cuts for five minutes and scrubbing away coagulated blood completely eliminates gamey aromas, giving you a crystal-clear baseline broth without needing expensive filtration.
• Meat-and-aromatic simmer: Cooking pork shoulder directly in water along with ginger, garlic, and green onions releases natural gelatin and fat into the broth, creating a velvety body faster than bone-only stocks.
• Table-side customization: Keeping the main pot unsalted prevents the meat from tightening up and allows every diner to balance their own bowl using dadaegi (spicy seasoning paste) and fermented shrimp.

Ingredients

• 600 g (about 1.3 lbs) pork shoulder (pork butt) or pork belly, cut into large 3-inch chunks
• 2.5 liters (about 10.5 cups) cold water
• 1 medium yellow onion (about 200 g / 7 oz), peeled and halved
• 6 cloves garlic, lightly smashed
• 1 knob ginger (about 15 g / 0.5 oz), sliced into thin coins
• 3 whole green onions (scallions), washed and cut into 3-inch lengths
• 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
• 2 tbsp cooking rice wine (mirin or cooking sake)

For the Dadaegi (Spicy Seasoning Paste):

• 2 tbsp gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes)
• 1 tbsp gochujang (Korean chili paste)
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp hot pork broth (taken from the main pot during cooking)

To Serve:

• 4 cups hot cooked short-grain white rice
• 2 tbsp saeujeot (Korean salted fermented shrimp) or fine sea salt to taste
• 1 cup buchu (garlic chives) or regular green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
• Fresh kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi) for serving

Substitutions

If you cannot find saeujeot (salted fermented shrimp) at a local Asian store, substitute it with fine sea salt mixed with a tiny splash of fish sauce. The fermented shrimp provides both saltiness and natural enzymes, but sea salt with fish sauce replicates that sharp savory hit. If garlic chives are unavailable, slice standard green onions thinly lengthwise. For the meat, pork shoulder offers the best balance of lean meat and connective tissue, but boneless pork country-style ribs also work well.

How to Make It

1. Soak and blanch the pork meat: Submerge your pork chunks in a bowl of cold water for 30 minutes to draw out trapped blood, then drain. Bring a large pot of plain water to a rolling boil over high heat, add the pork, and cook for exactly 5 minutes. Drain immediately and scrub the pork under cold running water to wash away all grey protein scum. Scrub the pot clean as well. Why: This step removes oxidized surface proteins and excess blood, which are the main culprits behind cloudy, unpleasantly gamey broth.
2. Build the stock base: Return the rinsed pork to the clean pot. Pour in 2.5 liters of cold water, followed by the halved onion, smashed garlic, ginger slices, green onions, black peppercorns, and rice wine. Bring the water to a rapid boil over high heat uncovered for 20 minutes, using a skimmer to remove any lingering surface foam. Why: Boiling rapidly without a lid for the first 20 minutes allows volatile organic compounds to evaporate into the air rather than settling back into your broth.
3. Simmer for tender meat: Turn the heat down to medium-low, cover the pot with a lid left slightly ajar, and let it simmer for 50 to 60 minutes. The broth is ready when a wooden chopstick easily slides through the center of the thickest pork piece without resistance. Why: Gentle, sustained heat converts tough collagen in the pork shoulder into smooth gelatin, tenderizing the meat while enriching the liquid.
4. Prepare the dadaegi paste: While the broth simmers, combine the gochugaru, gochujang, minced garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, and hot pork broth in a small bowl. Stir thoroughly and let it sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes. Why: Resting allows the dried pepper flakes to hydrate, blooming their natural red color and blending the sharp raw garlic into a rich paste.
5. Slice the pork and strain stock: Turn off the heat. Transfer the cooked pork chunks to a cutting board and let them cool for 10 minutes. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean bowl, discarding the boiled aromatics (onion, ginger, garlic, peppercorns). Return the clear, light-golden broth to the pot and keep it warm on low heat. Slice the rested pork across the grain into thin bite-sized slices. Why: Resting meat before slicing prevents its natural juices from running out on the cutting board.
6. Assemble and serve: Place 1 cup of piping hot rice into each individual serving bowl. Arrange a generous handful of sliced pork over the top of the rice, then ladle scalding hot broth over everything until submerged. Serve immediately with small side dishes of dadaegi, saeujeot, sliced garlic chives, and kimchi so each person can season their soup. Why: Dwaeji gukbap is traditionally assembled hot so the rice grains slightly absorb the broth without becoming mushy.

If Something Goes Wrong

Problem	Likely Cause	Fix
Broth smells gamey or unpleasantly strong	Incomplete soaking/blanching or leaving scum in pot	Soak pork in cold water for 30 minutes, blanch for 5 minutes, and scrub both pork and pot clean before main simmer.
Pork meat is tough or chewy	Under-simmered shoulder or sliced along grain	Simmer until a chopstick pierces meat effortlessly; cool 10 minutes and slice thinly across the grain.
Broth tastes flat or unsalted	Master pot left unsalted (intended) or lack of table condiments	Do not salt the main pot. Add saeujeot (salted shrimp) and dadaegi paste directly into your serving bowl.

Tips from a Korean Kitchen

In traditional Korean restaurants, cooks practice a technique called ttoriam. This involves scooping broth over cold rice in a bowl and pouring it back into the pot two or three times before serving. At home, using hot, freshly cooked rice saves you this step, but if you are using leftover cold rice, warm it in the microwave first so it doesn’t drop the temperature of your soup.

Always offer saeujeot at the table instead of salting the master pot during cooking. Fermented shrimp contains natural enzymes that aid in digesting rich pork fat, while delivering a sharp savory salinity that salt alone cannot match.

Scaling & Make-Ahead

To double this batch, use an 8-liter or larger pot. Keep the initial 20-minute uncovered boil unchanged, but extend the covered simmer by 10 to 15 minutes until tender. Broth and sliced pork store well in separate airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 1 month. Reheat broth to a boiling state before pouring over cooked rice and meat.

Key Takeaways

• Clean broth foundation: Soaking, blanching, and scrubbing pork eliminates gamey odor without requiring hours of bone extraction.
• Unsalted stock pot: Keeping the master broth unsalted retains pork tenderness and allows table-side customization.
• Authentic table seasoning: Saeujeot (fermented shrimp) and dadaegi paste provide essential umami and individual heat adjustment.

More Korean Recipes

• Comforting Korean Cabbage Soup: Baechu Doenjang Guk (배추 된장국)
• Creamy Korean Oxtail Soup (Kkori Gomtang)
• Jjamppong (Spicy Seafood Noodle Soup) – A Home Cook’s Recipe
• Home-Style Sujebi (Korean Hand-Torn Noodle Soup) Recipe