Move over gochujang [goh-choo-JONG]-spiced tater tots! Chicken simmered in spicy soy
sauce or a sweet fish-inspired snack may be the bigger fish in the foodie pond. Keep
watching to learn about other little-known Korean dishes you should be ordering.
Andong jjimdak, is a chicken dish named after the Korean city that's been referred to as, quote,
"the capital of Korean spirit". The dish does, in fact, originate in Andong as the name implies,
although it's now popular all over the country.
It seems that in the 1970s, chicken really started to take off in Korea, and both rotisserie
and fried chicken restaurants started popping up all over. Chicken vendors in Andong decided
they wanted to create their own regional specialty, and they came up with jjimdak.
To make jjimdak, the chicken is first boiled,
then simmered in a salty-sweet galbi sauce that is used for barbecue.
Galbi is soy sauce based and sweetened — in some cases, by using fruit such as pear.
Jjimdak is also spicy thanks to plenty of chili peppers, and it also includes
a selection of vegetables. The jjimdak served at Chicago's Ssyal contains bok choy, carrots,
green onions, mushrooms, onions, and potatoes, while spinach is a popular addition elsewhere.
Just before the jjimdak finishes cooking,
glass noodles are added to bulk up the dish and absorb all of the tasty sauce.
Bossam is a simple combination of cooked pork belly and cabbage leaves.
It can be strange how comfort food from one part of the world
can closely resemble dishes from another country thousands of miles away.
In Poland, just as in Korea, pork-stuffed cabbage is a popular dish.
Unlike the pork in Polish golabki, however, the pork in bossam is not chopped or ground,
nor is it mixed with rice and topped with tomato sauce.
Instead, bossam is typically made from boiled or steamed sliced pork belly. At Mr. Bossam in LA's
Koreatown, you can get the dish made from hog jowls or pork feet, and there's also the option
of bossam made from grilled meat. Whatever type you order it comes on a bed of noodles,
combining meat, cabbage, and starch in this filling and somewhat balanced meal.
Budae jjigae could be considered the original Korean-American fusion cuisine.
The reason for this dish — and for its name, which translates to "army base stew" — was the
Korean War. The original ingredients included American-made items such as mac and cheese,
baked beans, hot dogs, Spam, and various other forms of canned mystery meat.
As conditions in Korea improved after the war, budae jjigae came to include
newly available Korean foods such as noodles, dumplings, and fish cakes.
In time some of the processed meats used in the stew came to be domestically produced as well.
Today, restaurants specializing in budae jjigae can be found all over Korea,
but they've yet to catch on to any great extent in the United States.
One exception is Bally Budaejjigae in Suwanee, Georgia.
This restaurant makes its namesake dish, available in single and family-sized servings.
And it is filled to the brim with bean sprouts, ground beef,
kimchi, mushrooms, rice cakes, sausages,
Spam, and a "secret spicy broth". Optional add-ins included tofu, ramen noodles, and American cheese.
For many in the west, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of fish-shaped snacks is…
"The snack that smiles back! Goldfish!"
But in Korea, it's more likely that a different fishy treat might be top-of-mind. Bungeoppang
[boong-oh-PAANG], a popular Korean street snack, is a type of stuffed waffle or pancake shaped like
a fish. The fact that this dish bears a strong resemblance to Japanese taiyaki is no coincidence.
Taiyaki, a filled cake shaped like the red sea bream that's seen as a symbol of good fortune
in Japan, was invented in 1909. The very next year, Korea faced a significant hardship –- the
country was annexed by the Empire of Japan, and would not regain its freedom until WWII was over.
While a sweet treat is no consolation whatsoever for decades of oppression,
there's little doubt that taiyaki was introduced to Korea during that time period. Koreans,
however, renamed these fish-shaped cakes bungeoppang, which means carp bread.
While traditional bungeoppang are filled with sweet red bean paste, they now come in a wide
variety of flavors such as chocolate and custard to suit today's tastes. There's also a variation
called ah-boong where the fish waffle is filled with or used to top a dish of ice cream. If you're
feeling ambitious, you can even buy a fish-shaped waffle maker to cook bungeoppang at home.
Dakdoritang [tak-TOH-ree-tong] is a chicken stew cooked in a fiery red sauce made with gochujang,
soy sauce, and garlic. The stew typically includes
potatoes and other vegetables such as carrots and onions.
It also seems to date from the Japanese colonial period in Korea, and part of its
name is thought to have come from the Japanese language. Dak is the Korean word for chicken,
while tori is Japanese for bird or poultry. Meanwhile, tang is Korean for a type of soup.
Even though dakdoritang is found under that name on countless restaurant menus,
many Koreans prefer to call it by another name: dakbokkeumtang [tahk-BOKE-oom-tong]. Many
older Koreans feel that it is a more suitable name for the dish.
Since bokkeum [BOKE-oom] means stir-fried, the name translates to stir fry chicken stew.
Linguistic politics aside, the words dakdoritang and dakbokkeumtang both refer to the same recipe.
More importantly, it's delicious no matter what you call it.
As per the previous slide, we've already established that dak means chicken.
We've also discussed the fact that galbi refers to a type of Korean barbecue. Well,
put both words together and what do you have? You guessed it, barbecued chicken.
Galbi is usually assumed to refer to barbecued beef ribs since this is the
most well-known version. Dak galbi, however, is also pretty popular, as it should be.
The sauce itself is often made of sweetened soy sauce seasoned with garlic and may contain
additional ingredients such as sesame oil, rice wine, or gochujang.
Instead of being applied after the chicken is cooked as is often the case with American
barbecue sauce, it is typically used as a marinade. At some restaurants, including
Mapo [MAA-poh] Galbi [GAL-bee] in LA's Koreatown, dak galbi [TAHK GAL-bee] is served in the form of
a stir-fry with rice cakes, sweet potatoes, and a leafy green herb called ggaenip [KAE-neep].
They'll even top it off with melted cheese if you wish. Sure, it's not your typical
barbecue chicken, but cheesy Korean stir-fried barbecue is poised to become our new favorite.
The idea of nose-to-tail eating, while popularized by 21st-century foodies,
predates the trendy hashtag version by several millennia. After all,
it was darn hard to take down a woolly mammoth without having it attempt to return the favor.
A caveman is nearly crushed by a charging mammoth.
So most people weren't about to throw away a single bit of that hard-won beast.
One Korean dish that seems to embody the zero-waste philosophy
is gamjatang [KAAM-jah-tong], a soup made out of pork backbones.
The dish was created in the city of Incheon by dockworkers looking for something dirt-cheap and
filling. This was poverty cuisine at its finest -– and so tasty it was soon picked up by restaurants.
So popular has this dish become, that gamjatang-flavored ramen is now a thing, as well.
So how do you make spine soup? Assuming you can get a hold of this often overlooked pig
part, you simmer it in broth with potatoes and season it with chilis,
garlic, bean paste, and wild sesame seeds.
You can also garnish it with sesame leaves and chives.
Eating the spines might be tricky, but chopsticks help separate the cooked pork
while the potatoes fill you up even if you don't get all of the meat.
In the U.S., we typically eat high on the hog – quite literally, as some of our preferred
pork parts include chops, loins, and baby back ribs, all from the top part of the pig.
In Korea, however, cooks embrace the entire swine. While pork belly may be the most popular part,
they're not afraid to go a little lower down — in fact, all the way to the bottom of the pig,
as in jokbal, a dish of spiced sliced pig's feet.
"I don't like pigs feet!"
Hey! Don't knock it until you've tried it! Jokbal is typically made from trotters,
but often includes some of the hocks, as well. To make this dish,
the pork parts are boiled in a sauce of rice wine, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.
The pig trotters are then cooled, chopped up, wrapped in lettuce or cabbage leaves,
and eaten with kimchi, garlic, chilis, and a fermented shrimp sauce called saeujeot.
While the best reason to eat jokbal is that it tastes great, it's also
popular due to the fact that the collagen content has alleged anti-aging properties.
Jokbal is also pretty nutritious, something that makes it a favorite with breastfeeding moms,
according to a 2017 study published in the Korean Journal of Pediatrics.
While many Koreans today celebrate their birthdays with cake – and some, no doubt,
with soju as well – there is another dish that is typically eaten on this occasion.
"Ice cream?"
No - it's something even more unlikely - it's a little dish called miyeokguk.
Birthday miyeokguk is a common tradition because the practice honors the celebrant's mom.
As it was recommended that pregnant women eat the stuff for an entire month in order to facilitate
an easier birth and stimulate milk production. This bit of folk wisdom dates back over 1,000
years and may have been inspired by the sight of mama whales eating seaweed after calving.
Dried seaweed may be the most important ingredient in miyeokguk, but it's not the only one. The soup
is usually flavored with soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil, and it may also include meat
or seafood. Miyeokguk, if prepared properly, can be tasty as well as nutritious, but it's
not the sort of dish you should eat all the time even if you are pregnant or a nursing mother.
The soup contains extremely high levels of iodine,
and Korea Biomedical Review reports that eating large amounts of it may be a contributing factor
to the high rate of thyroid cancer in Korea, particularly among women.
While many of the Korean dishes we're familiar with come from South Korea,
the noodle dish known as naengmyeon is of North Korean origin. There are
actually two different types of naengmyeon: mulnaengmyeon, which comes from Pyongyang,
and bibimnaengmyeon [pee-BIM-neng-myon], a specialty of Hamgyong [HAHM-gyung] Province.
The noodles from the former are made with buckwheat,
while the latter is made of corn. But both ingredients testify to the fact
that the colder northern latitudes are less conducive to rice growing than in the south.
The two types of naengmyeon are prepared in different ways. Mulnaengmyeon noodles are
served in an icy-cold beef or chicken broth topped with some combination of boiled eggs,
cucumbers, kimchi radishes, sliced pears, and sliced beef or pork.
Bibimnaengmyeon, while also served cold, does not come with broth. This version is also much
spicier than the fairly mild mulnaengmyeon, as it tends to be liberally laced with gochujang. This
dish also typically includes boiled eggs, kimchi radishes, and is often topped with sliced fish.
Is chicken soup the universal cure-all? Apparently, its reputation as a tastier
alternative to penicillin extends to Korea, as well. Samgyetang [som-GAY-tong], a Korean remedy,
is doubly healthy since it is made with chicken and ginseng [JIN-seng] roots.
The soup is credited with the ability to perform miracles such as reducing stress levels,
promoting weight loss, improving digestion, and helping to cure a wide variety of illnesses.
Interestingly enough, it's more likely to be eaten during the summer than in the winter.
While it might seem odd to us, eating a hot dish can actually help the body cool down,
and samgyetang is also said to stimulate the appetite on
those days when it's too hot to eat a proper meal.
To make samgyetang, you take a whole chicken and stuff it with chestnuts, rice, and Korean dates,
then boil it in a broth made from ginseng and flavored with garlic and green onions.
In some cases, the broth also contains medicinal ingredients such as ginkgo.
As samgyetang is a pretty labor-intensive recipe, it's not something that many people
prepare at home. Instead, there are numerous restaurants that specialize in this dish.
They serve it up by the bowlful, accompanied by side dishes such as gizzards sauteed in garlic.
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