Ryu Soo-young’s Myeongnan Butter Pasta: The Bowl-Mixed Method Explained
Ryu Soo-young’s myeongnan butter pasta combines hot spaghetti, butter and salted pollock roe in a bowl. In his September 30, 2022 Fun-Staurant demonstration, mayonnaise gives the sauce a creamier finish without adding cream. The useful trick is keeping the pasta water: he adds it gradually until the noodles are coated in a loose sauce.
Watch Ryu Soo-young make the pasta
What is myeongnan?
Myeongnan (명란) is pollock roe. Ryu uses pale baek-myeongnan (백명란) in the demonstration. Look for the Korean name when checking a Korean grocery label; the salt level and seasoning can differ between products.
He cuts the end of the roe sac and pushes the eggs out, leaving the membrane behind. This allows the small eggs to mix through the butter rather than leaving a whole sac in the sauce.
A pot for the noodles, a bowl for the sauce
The clip belongs to his one-pan pasta series, but this particular method does not cook everything together in a frying pan. He boils the spaghetti in a wide pot and mixes the sauce in a separate bowl.
That distinction matters if you are following along: do not add the butter and roe to three liters of boiling water. Reserve that water for cooking the noodles and loosening the sauce later.
The quantities shown in the video
- Spaghetti: two servings, shown as a bundle rather than a weighed amount.
- Cooking water: 3 liters.
- Salt for that water: one spoonful in his demonstration.
- Butter: 40 grams.
- Baek-myeongnan: one roe sac.
- Reserved pasta water: added gradually to adjust the sauce.
- Mayonnaise, egg yolk and black pepper: used to finish the dish.
This is a guide to the broadcast method, not a laboratory-tested conversion into cups and measuring spoons. The size of a roe sac varies, and the clip does not give a weighed spaghetti quantity. Follow your pasta package for the serving size and cooking time.
How he brings the sauce together
- Boil the spaghetti. He salts the water first and explains that different pasta brands need different cooking times. Use the timing on your own packet.
- Prepare the bowl while the noodles cook. Put the butter and the scraped roe in the bowl.
- Add the hot pasta and mix. The heat melts the butter. Work promptly so it coats the noodles rather than remaining in chunks.
- Loosen with pasta water. He starts with a couple of spoonfuls, mixes, then adds more as needed. The goal is a moist sauce with a little liquid around the pasta, rather than a dry mound.
- Mix in mayonnaise and plate. The broadcast finishes the plated pasta with egg yolk and black pepper.
Why he keeps adding pasta water
Ryu emphasizes the starch and salt in the cooking water. In the demonstration, adding it makes the mixture easier to stir and helps the butter and roe spread through the noodles. His advice is to adjust by the texture rather than treating one fixed amount as correct for every batch.
The dish still contains butter and mayonnaise, so “no cream” should not be read as “light” or “dairy-free.” The appeal is a short ingredient list and a mixing method that does not need a separate pan sauce.
Use the original clip as your visual guide
Jump to about 2:14 for the butter and roe, 3:44 for mixing the pasta, and 4:16 for the pasta-water adjustments. The mayonnaise appears around 5:38, followed by plating near the end.
Open the official KBS recipe video
Source: KBS Entertain, Fun-Staurant broadcast September 30, 2022. This article explains the televised method; it does not claim an independent cooking test.