Ssuk-guk (Mugwort Soup)

Ssuk-guk belongs to the narrow part of spring. Not the warm, generous part, but the first weeks when the market women sell small bundles of young mugwort, still tender enough to bruise between your fingers. Cook the month you're standing in. If the ssuk is already tall, woolly, and bitter, don't force this soup out of season. Make another guk and wait for next year.

My mother rinsed ssuk three times, not because she enjoyed extra work, but because grit hides where the leaves curl. Master Seong-nyeo made me smell the bundle before it touched the pot. Good ssuk smells green and faintly medicinal, never dusty, never sharp. The soup asks for restraint: a clean anchovy-kelp broth, a spoon of doenjang (fermented soybean paste), rice water to round it, and only a few minutes of cooking. Boil it hard and long, and the spring leaves punish you with bitterness.

The old instruction says a handful of ssuk. Notebook 18 says 90 grams cleaned leaves for four bowls. 손맛 is real; I measure it anyway. That amount gives the broth enough green flavor without turning the pot harsh, and it lets the doenjang sit underneath where it belongs.