(electronic pop music)
- Ooh!
(sighing)
It's like a steam facial.
So we're about to eat one of the most iconic Korean dishes,
and it's called samgye-tang.
They take a young chicken,
stuff it with glutinous rice
and then they put in some other kind of medicinal-type
ingredients, you know, either little pieces
or a whole chunk of ginseng, garlic,
and then they put in some Chinese dates, or jujubes.
While it's cooking, the whole chicken kind of boils in there
and it tenderizes, and all the flavors of the chicken
go into the broth.
So I'm here in Chicago at a restaurant called
Ssyal Ginseng Chicken.
I'm really looking forward to
getting what this dish promises.
Strength, stamina, nourishment, and energy.
(Asian-inspired hip hop beat)
It came out of a summer tradition.
In a largely agrarian society, like Korea,
farmers are working every day the sun is out.
That, the sun beating down on your body,
it drains you.
What they would do, is they would collectively take
three days out of the summer and be like,
"Hey, okay, on this day,
"we're gonna all eat this dish together.
"We're gonna eat something that's hot and salty
"and has a lot of nutrition,
"and it's gonna give us life again."
And that tradition continues to this day.
(hip hop beat)
The tradition is called sambok.
That focus on our health and what we eat
and how it affects us
is part of the reason why Koreans
are generally pretty healthy.
It's cool that this dish is just a really nice example.
It's a supreme example of great Korean comfort food.
Oh, it's falling apart.
It's so tender.
I'm gonna add just a little more salt.
I like salt.
You do need to season it a little bit.
Ooh, that's good.
That might be some of the purest
chicken soup you could ever have.
I like to dip it in the salt.
Mmm.
Wow, I mean, this thing is meltingly tender.
Here's a jujube,
which is like a Chinese date.
It's sort of dry, so it has a kind of prune-like flavor.
Oh, here we go.
This is what I was looking for.
Whole garlic.
It's just melty.
It's almost like--
Look at that.
With almost no effort at all,
this thing just melts away.
So she gave us a little bit of insamju,
or ginseng wine, and usually when you order this dish,
you get a little shot of it.
So I'm gonna have some.
Ooh.
That's boozy.
I mean, it's kinda like a really fiery soju.
It's nice, it's a little medicinal, a little herbaceous,
but it's not, you know, overpowering.
I would say it's kind of like Korean Malört,
so it goes really well in Chicago.
The ginseng, it's a medicinal root,
and so what it's supposed to do is,
I mean, there's a lot of things it purportedly
helps you with.
I'm gonna just list off a couple of them,
'cause I think they're hilarious.
Fatigue, and memory, and stress, and anxiety,
and even things like flatulence, which,
I mean, sure, that helps.
It definitely feels medicinal.
Like, I think there's a psychological effect
to eating something like this, right?
I mean, people have been saying that placebos
are more powerful than actual drugs
because we tell our bodies that we're being healed.
I'm not saying that ginseng isn't.
I think ginseng has been shown, in studies,
that it does have some actual medical benefits for eating,
weakness and exhaustion and loss of concentration.
But more than anything, if you think that this
is gonna restore you and give you your health
and give you strength and stamina and vitality,
then it's probably gonna do that.
I think a good bowl of chicken soup
is always gonna do that.
Mmm.
Thanks so much for watching,
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