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Haejang Guk (Hangover Soup)

Haejang Guk (Hangover Soup)

By Irene YooSeptember 25, 2025

  • Makes
    2 servings

My umma’s favorite soup is haejang guk (literally, “hangover soup”), which is funny because she never drinks. It still makes me laugh to think back to my petite little mom taking her kids to a hole-­in-­the-­wall haejang guk place for lunch, surrounded by ajeossis sweating out their hangovers around us, blowing their noses and wiping their brows and calling the ajumma over to ask for a bottle of soju, a little hair of the dog. My mom loves lots of ugeoji (here, dried napa cabbage leaves) in her haejang guk. (She also loves when it has lots of seonji, or coagulated blood, but that’s a recipe for another book.) It’s kind of a genius food-­waste hack to take the unsightly, larger, tougher leaves that surround the tender napa cabbage, dry them, and then reconstitute them for the umami-­rich base of a homey soup. If you can get your hands on some homemade beef bone broth that’s so thick, it’s Jell-O at room temperature, this is the perfect dish to use it for. You can also use bags of Korean-­style beef bone broth, which are great to have on hand (though not quite as thick and jiggly). If you find that your only option is using standard grocery store beef broth, or water, you can “beef it up” with a hunk of beef, beef bone, kelp, or dried mushrooms for additional umami, depth, and hangover-­fighting nutrients.

Published with permission from Soju Party by Irene Yoo Copyright © 2025 by Irene Yoo. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.


Weight-volume equivalents and recipe style may differ from recipes developed and published by Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street.

Ingredients
  • Ugeoji
  • 6

    outer napa cabbage leaves

  • Soup
  • 1 ½

    teaspoons sesame oil

  • ½

    pound beef chuck, thinly sliced

  • ½

    cup thinly sliced mu (Korean radish) or daikon, cut into 1-­ inch squares

  • 1

    tablespoon doenjang

  • 1

    tablespoon minced garlic

  • 1 ½

    teaspoons soup soy sauce

  • 2

    tablespoons gochugaru

  • 4

    cups beef bone broth

  • 4

    scallions, cut into 2-­ inch lengths

  • 1

    packed cup soybean sprouts, rinsed

  • ½

    teaspoon fish sauce

  • Cooked rice, for serving

Step 1

Prepare the ugeoji. Bring a pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the napa cabbage leaves and cook for 5 minutes. Remove and rinse in cold water until cool. Cut off any unsightly brown edges from the stem, then shred the leaves into small pieces. Squeeze to drain excess moisture. You can freeze this ugeoji until you’re ready to use it.

Step 2

Make the soup. In a medium pot or ttukbaegi (a Korean earthenware pot used for boiling soup), heat the sesame oil over medium heat. Add the beef and stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes, then add the ugeoji. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes, which will help remove any excess moisture from the cabbage. Add the radish, doenjang, garlic, soup soy sauce, and gochugaru and stir to combine. Add the beef bone broth, bring to a boil, and cook for 20 minutes.

Step 3

Add the scallions and soybean sprouts. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for another 5 minutes; the ugeoji should be deeply cooked and have taken on the color of the doenjang soup. Finish with the fish sauce and serve immediately, piping hot, with bowls of warm rice and lots of napkins to sop up your hangover sweat.