Hello, welcome! I’m so excited to have you here today to talk about how to make Korean seaweed soup without meat. I have been vegan for many years now and this was one of the first recipes that I developed after starting my vegan diet. This is one of the most common Korean soups that is so loved in Korea. It is made out of seaweed called Miyeok or wakame, which you might have eaten in Japanese miso soup.
Introduction to Miyeokguk
Miyeokguk, 미역국, translates to soup made with wakame seaweed. Miyeok is wakame seaweed and guk means soup in Korean.
Eaten on Special Occasions
Interestingly enough, miyeokguk is not only a common food to eat regularly but also a food that is associated with birthdays. It is certainly one of the comfort foods in Korea.
In Korea, mothers eat miyeokguk after giving birth to a child. On birthdays, this seaweed soup is also eaten together with glutinous rice and red beans. The long seaweed symbolizes longevity while red beans symbolize fighting against bad luck. The glutinous rice was a very special ingredient back in the day.
So cooking the precious ingredient like glutinous rice with red beans, and eating the rice with soup made with long wakame seaweed became a tradition to eat on birthdays.
Can You Make Korean Seaweed Soup without Meat?
After knowing all these amazing health benefits, doesn’t it make you want to cook and eat the miyeokguk right away? I certainly am!
But wait, most miyeokguk have some sort of meat or seafood in them… don’t they? Can you cook delicious Korean seaweed soup without meat? Yes, you can!
But before we dive into making the miyeokguk without meat, let’s go through the traditional miyeokguk types so we know what we want to create here.
Traditional Miyeokguk
Usually, only one type of protein below is used for the Korean seaweed soup for the broth and its texture.
- Beef: The most common type of ingredient for the soup
- Chicken: Eaten in the Jeolla-do region in Korea
- Dried Pollack: A common fish ingredient
- Mussels: A common seashell ingredient
Making Korean Seaweed Soup without Meat
If you look at traditional miyeokguk, meat or seafood was used to make broth and to add texture.
So the solution to making this Korean seaweed soup without meat is to find ingredients that can give you the deep savory umami flavor to the broth, and possibly something to add texture.
With this recipe I am going to share with you now, you’d be surprised how easy it is to cook miyeok-guk with a deep savory umami taste with such simple ingredients! Here are the heroes of the recipe: Perilla seeds.
In fact, this Korean seaweed soup with ground perilla seeds is not only a great way to make the broth creamy and savory, it is a traditional cooking method. Ground perilla seeds are so nutty, savory, rich, and creamy that you do not need other ingredients to add to your broth.
There are other plant-based ingredients that are used in vegan miyeokguk like shiitake Mushrooms and tofu. I included tofu in this recipe as an optional ingredient. It is also a traditional way of making Korean seaweed soup without meat.
There are some recipes that add shiitake mushrooms in miyeokguk. Personally, I think shiitake mushrooms have a very strong unique flavor and smell that hinders the miyeokguk taste. Also, it is not a traditional way to cook miyeokguk with shiitake mushrooms. But it does add a very nice texture to the soup, and it tastes great. So you can experiment with shiitake mushrooms in your miyeokguk recipe if you like.
So now that we covered the ingredients to make Korean seaweed soup without meat, let’s talk about the health benefits of Korean seaweed soup.
Korean Seaweed Soup Benefits
Eating Korean seaweed soup, miyeokguk is not only delicious but also offers quite a few health benefits. Korean seaweed soup has a pretty simple ingredient list, so most of the health benefits come from the main ingredient, wakame seaweed.
Wakame Seaweed Health Benefits
1. Low Glycemic & Low Calories
One of the unique nutritional facts about wakame seaweed is that it is extremely low not only in calories but also in the glycemic index.
The glycemic index has a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the easiest and the fastest food that will raise your blood sugar. Do you know what score wakame got on the glycemic index? A whopping 4! It has about 35-45 kcal per 100 grams of raw wakame seaweed which is about 0.22 pounds in the U.S. system.
So wakame seaweed is one of those freaky foods that the more you eat, the more weight you lose.
2. Strong Bones
Wakame seaweed is rich in nutrients such as calcium, iron, and magnesium. Calcium is an essential component of bones and teeth, which is crucial for maintaining bone health. There are 1.4 milligrams of calcium per 100g/0.22lb of raw wakame, which is 70% of the daily value!
Also, Iron plays a vital role in transporting oxygen in the blood and can help prevent anemia. Magnesium is involved in the formation and maintenance of bones.
Perilla Seeds Health Benefits
1. Plant-Based Omega-3 Source
Eating fish is often considered good for your brain and health because of omega-3. But did you know that perilla seeds, along with flaxseed and walnuts, have a great amount of omega-3?
Perilla seeds contain one of the highest proportions of omega-3 (ALA) fatty acids, at 54-64%.
Per 100g/0.22lb, perilla seeds have 63.1g of omega 3! Compared to salmon which has 0.3g and mackerel 1.7g we think are great sources of omega-3, perilla seeds win by a substantial amount.
Besides, marine pollution is only getting worse in this modern world (more on this topic below) so eating lots of fish is not recommended anymore.
2. Immune Function
The right balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats is important for our immune system.
While omega-6 is needed in our body for immunity and clotting, too much of it can cause health issues. In the modern world, people have a lot more omega-6 compared to omega-3, sometimes up to 20 times more! The imbalance of these fatty acids can cause long-term illness.
Perilla seeds have a very high amount of omega-3. So eating perilla seeds can help you a great deal in balancing the fatty acids to have your immune function work well.
So now that I told you a lot about these amazing perilla seeds, I have some recommendations of perilla seeds for you.
Two tablespoons of these wonderful perilla seeds make all the difference in miyeokguk!
Ingredient Recommendations
Here is the star of the show: perilla seeds.
1. McCabe Organic Roasted Perilla Seeds, 8 oz
This roasted organic perilla seeds is the key ingredient to make Korean seaweed soup without meat so savory and delicious! It is also good to use the roasted seeds for nuttier and deeper flavors.
2. McCabe Organic Raw Perilla Seeds – Raw Perilla Seeds 1.5 Lbs
While toasted perilla seeds taste great, raw seeds contain more nutrition including the omega-3 we talked about. So if you want to get more nutrition out of your seaweed soup, this package of raw perilla seeds is a great choice.
So if you have this key ingredient ready to make the vegan miyeokguk, let’s get started!
Vegan Miyeokguk | How to Make Korean Seaweed Soup without Meat
Vegan Miyeokguk
Ingredients
- 25 g Dried wakame seaweed
- 2 cloves Garlic Minced
- 2 tbsp Perilla seeds Toasted and grinded
- 1 cup Water
- 1 cup Unsweetened soymilk or oat milk
- 1 tbsp Soy sauce
- 1 tsp Salt
- 0.44 oz Tofu 200g, optional
Instructions
- Soak the dried wakame in the water and let it soften up for 30 minutes. While waiting, you can prepare the other ingredients.
- Finely chop garlic.
- Toast the perilla seeds and grind them with a mortar and pestle.
- Bring the submerged wakame and the water to a boil, and add garlic, and ground perilla seeds.
- Optionally, you can add tofu for more protein. Cut the tofu into cubes and add the cubes to the soup.
- After 5 minutes, you can add your soy sauce and soymilk or oat milk.
- Taste and adjust the seasoning with more salt or soy sauce to your liking.
Tips to Make Korean Seaweed Soup without Meat
1. Add garlic for Less “Sea Smell”
This miyeokguk is very much loved in Korea, but I heard (and experienced) that non-Koreans don’t like the “sea smell” and the slimy texture of the wakame seaweed.
So if you are not very fond of the sea smell of the seaweed, you can shop for some more garlic and put it in the soup. Garlic does a great job of softening the “sea smell.”
Many Koreans including me love the smell, so this is not an issue for us. But I still like to put a tiny bit of garlic for more nutrition and to soften the taste.
2. Cook Quickly
People who didn’t grow up eating wakame don’t like the slimy texture of wakame. If that is your case, you can boil it for a shorter period to make it less soft.
Not only does the wakame become soft and slimy when cooked for a long time, but the color of the seaweed changes from green to dark greyish-green. The green color means more chlorophyll, as I explained in my blog post on the leafy green list and why you need to eat more.
Chlorophyll offers a lot of health benefits such as detoxification, anti-aging, and reduction of body odor!
So cook your miyeokguk quickly to preserve the firm texture and bright green colors of wakame.
Marine Pollution and Seaweed…
In condolence for Japan’s discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima, I wanted to bring awareness around marine pollution.
Japan decided to release this radioactive water from its catastrophic 2011 nuclear disaster on the 23rd of August, 2023, into the Pacific Ocean. It has raised serious concerns about its potential impact on marine ecosystems and the health of coastal communities.
Experts have different opinions on how much impact it will have on Earth and the ecosystem. It brought a huge debate in Korea, and many people did not trust the safety of this discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima. It was a huge debate even among people in Japan, too.
Marine pollution (or any kind of pollution in this world these days, for that matter) is already a big problem that it is advised not to eat so much seafood, especially for pregnant women.
Lots of different kinds of seafood like kelp, wakame, and nori have been a huge part of the East Asian diet. I don’t know how safe it is to dump discharge of radioactive water into the ocean, so I’m not going to risk my health by eating more seafood.
I will certainly eat less seafood from now on… So I wanted to talk about this Korean seaweed soup that I love so much.
What about you? What is your opinion on this matter? Do you think it’ll be okay, or are you planning to eat less seafood?
Summary of Vegan Miyeokguk
I hope you enjoyed this vegan miyeokguk recipe.
It is not only easy but also delicious and nutritious to make Korean seaweed soup without meat by using ground perilla seeds.
I make this soup on the birthdays of my Korean family. I don’t cook this soup as often as I used to after Japan’s discharge of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. This soup still holds a dear place in my heart and I can’t just let it go.
Korean Rice Cake Soup, Tteokguk
If you are interested in another savory iconic Korean soup, I have a Korean rice cake soup, tteokguk recipe for you here.
This soup is eaten on Lunar New Year in Korea, and it is also a very easy dish to whip up quickly. A spoonful of hot, white, savory broth with chewy rice cake and soft tofu is so hearty and wonderful.
Vegan Tteokguk Recipe
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