we're at Seoul's biggest seafood market and that can only mean one thing a
seafood feast
there's row upon row of seafood vendors who've got these
massive tanks full of fresh seafood, let's go and find something to eat
we're buying the seafood fresh from the tanks and then we're taking it to a
restaurant where they're gonna cook it up for us you have got to check out this
process, I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're
hungry let's eat
Noryangjin fish market is made up of
two buildings so we are in the old building right now and I reckon it has a
lot more character than the newer spot but there is so much seafood to choose from there's
all manner of shellfish, there are prawns, fish, octopus, sea
cucumbers there is anything and everything you could possibly want to
create for yourself a gigantic seafood feast
we've just bought some fresh seafood from this vendor here we got one baby
octopus and half a kilo of sea pineapple, now we're off to find a fresh
fish
"Masshisoyo, sam man o chonon"
"So 3,500?"
we've come to this lovely seafood vendor and she's showing us what looks to be a
fish like a sole or a flounder let's work out how much it's gonna be
so it's 35,000 won which is almost about $40 I think we can try and bargain it down
a little bit
we've now purchased the fish we did a good bit of bargaining on that one and
now they cut it up for us, before we go off to a restaurant so another lady's
going to take us to her restaurant we shall prepare all of the seafood for us
to eat
we're following the lady who owns the restaurant she's got all the fish bones
with her as well because we're gonna get a seafood stew made up
we've been led through some back alleys in the market into this little
restaurant where we're getting the octopus and the sea pineapple prepared and then
we have this huge plate of fish ready to go, look at that fish
amazing, the ladies have brought over a plate of baby octopus and you can see
they've literally just cut the head off, cleaned it and then popped it on this
plate with some sesame seeds and some sesame oil and you can see the
tentacles still moving so the nerve endings are still going and look if I pick up
a piece, look at it squiggling away I'm just going to pop
it in my gob and see what it tastes like
it's still stuck to the chopstick and it's stuck to my tongue, it's crazy, it's such an interesting feeling mm-hmm
and that sesame oil is just so fragrant, so beautiful and they say that with this
sashimi style octopus, you just keep chewing and chewing and then it becomes
really sweet and it's so tender, I'm gonna go for another bit oh I can barely
pick it up off the plate because it's stuck alright it's still moving away
that is so delicious, it's really fresh doesn't taste fishy at all and the
aroma and nuttiness of those sesame seeds just really adds to it
next up I'm gonna try these sea pineapples that we got oh and also look at this in the middle
of the table we've got this spicy looking fish broth just gonna start
bubbling away that just got put on the table with all the fish bones from the
fish that we purchased, let's try this sea pineapple, it's a very very
interesting looking thing it's sort of orange and knobbly but this has just been cut
up, it's completely raw, let's try this little bit right here
it's very soft, I thought it
was gonna be much chewier than that, it sort of just goes down very easily it's got a
quite a bitter taste, sort of a real tang to it, it's, bitter is the overriding flavour
which I did not expect I'm gonna have a little bit more
it's like eating through the skin of an orange, that real tingly bitterness with a
little bit of a salty sea flavour and then that overriding bitterness, ohh
it just exploded a bit in my mouth and that was real sea-foody, salty, shellfish
tasting but sort of the texture of an oyster and has the flavour of an oyster
but much more bitter, thst's a very interesting little thing
we've been
given some wasabi so I'm gonna add a little bit of soy to that and then dip
this sea pineapple into that mixture alright it's just such an interesting
looking thing you can see these bits are quite jelly-like and globby and then this
bit almost looks a little bit like a brain it's got all sorts of orangey
brown creamy bits in it, let's give this bit a go, so I'm gonna dip it in the
wasabi and the soy, all right
very salty, from that, oh it just slipped down my throat very
salty and it's a very slimy texture so very
similar to an oyster like Thomas said but the overriding flavour is a bitterness
and a saltiness
so we've got this big pot of fish stew bubbling away in the middle of
the table and that's gonna become infused with that fish flavour because
it's got the carcass of the fish that we bought before but first while that's cooking
let's try this hoe or raw fish it's just this huge platter and it's been
filleted perfectly, it's got some pickled ginger, there's some wasabi, not sure what
these are maybe garlic but let's just give it a go
as is, I'm gonna dip it in a little bit of soy and get a bit of that wasabi on
there and try it
mmm ohhh it's almost a little bit chewy, it's so fresh, no discernible fish favour it's just
very mild, that is super tasty, we've also got this plate of lettuce leaves here
so what I'm gonna do is just make a little bit of a wrap, so I'm just gonna get some pieces of the fish, dip it in
the soy and get some wasabi again and pop it in that lettuce, might grab a
little bit of this garlic which is hanging around as well, swipe that in the
gochujang, so gochujang is a red pepper chilli sauce which is used heaps in Korean
cooking all right let's just wrap that up, quite a big little package but pop it all in one go
mmm mmmm whoa that was the perfect mouthful the fish is almost creamy in texture and
then that gochujang is sweet and spicy and savoury, got the zing from the garlic and
then this lettuce was just so fresh this is turning out to be an epic meal
I'm gonna grab a couple of bits of this white fish
I want to dip it in this gochujang sauce as well so we'll give that a good
coating then I'm gonna pop it on this lettuce leaf and now we've got these little
bits here that look like pickled garlic
look at that, so let's pop that on top too, I think that's the perfect
little bite, let's wrap that lettuce leaf up and give that a go, the sauce has a
burst of flavour, not really spicy but tangy, sour almost but that garlic it's
not that strong because it's been pickled it's just giving a beautiful
light garlic taste to that fish which is creamy like Sheena said but it has a
little bit of chew going on as well so it's a great texture in the mouth
and it's not fishy one bit, I think Sheena said that too it's
just a beautiful fresh sea flavour that is really, really good fresh fish and
now the smells of this stew, woah that's hot, the smell of this stew cos it's
sitting on the table, really bubbling away, that's sort of gonna
round off this meal because it smells incredible we've got to try this one
Sheena
we've turned the heat off on our seafood stew because it was rapidly
losing the soup through the steam but it's made up of all these incredible
looking ingredients we've got spring onion, there's some coriander here, there's
garlic, there's mungbean shoots and most
importantly there's that fish carcass so that's the fish head there oh look at
that whoa I just peeled back the cheek and you've got this beautiful
looking cheek meat I'm just gonna go ahead and eat that because it looks way
too good to pass up
ohh it's just melt-in-your-mouth it's so soft, all right, time to dish up so the
broth has got quite a bit of a red tinge to it so it's got some chilli in it
there's a bit of melon there, I'm gonna add some soup to my bowl and then get a little
bit of this fish that's hanging about so the fish has just broken away from the
carcass and you can see the spine there
so I'm gonna add that to my bowl also get some greens, all right let's try it, where's my spoon
ok ohh this is the perfect weather to be eating
this dish it's minus 1 degrees today in Seoul and this is just
gonna warm us right up ok, time to just try the soup by itself, oh wow it's very
salty and it's just been infused with that fish carcass it's got such a strong
seafood flavour, it's a little bit spicy
but the overwhelming flavour is the savouriness, the saltiness, I'm gonna peel
away a little bit of the meat from that, the fish bones there and give those a go
and get a little bit of spring onion and some mungbean all right
it's so hearty the meat is just so tender and then you've got the crisp, fresh
flavour from the coriander and the spring onion that is going to warm us right up
I've got a bowl of this stew now to try so it's just a big piece of bony fish there's
the backbone there swimming in that thin broth you can see it's really
watery and soupy let's try some of the broth by itself to start us off,
oh yum
that's really salty and that fish it's got a beautiful fish flavour from it
because it's all the carcass, it's all that deep fish flavour, it's really rich
almost in fish flavour, get a little bit more broth but get some coriander
stems on this one too
that wasn't coriander that was just some sort of
green vege, oh that broth it's very salty very, very salty it could go with some
rice or something would be quite good with that but not in a bad way salty
that sort of natural seafood saltiness and I love it, it's got a little
bit of a spice kick nothing too major, having that hot dish to go with the rest
of the food we're having is perfect because like Sheena said it is very cold
outside today so coming in from the freezing cold fish market into here is
really nice and we were in the old part of the fish market there are two parts
they're right next door to each other and the old part it just
sort of an old concrete shell whereas the new part looks a lot more fancy but
we were actually in the old fish market about a year and a half ago and it was
absolutely jam-packed with stalls, when we were there today it was not very busy
with stalls it seemed about half of the stalls have left so maybe they're all
being transitioned to the new one so if you get a chance to come and experience
it while the old one is still open it's a really special thing to do to buy your
fish and then get led into these restaurants up in these little alleys
and they prepare all this food for you, you can still do this from the new fish
market but the old one just has that great feeling you can tell a lot has
gone on in that building
that was a really good and really interesting meal
it's really fun working out all the ins and outs of how to do that because we
don't speak a word of Korean we've learnt to sort of say 1, 2, 3, hello, thank
you but beyond that nothing so working out the price, what fish we could get,
where we went to eat it, how it worked when we were at the restaurant was all a
lot of sign language and smiles so it was a little bit difficult but it
definitely wasn't hard so if you're a traveler coming to Seoul definitely put
that on your list as a very, very memorable experience here at
the fish market
whoa that seafood was so fresh, so delicious, make sure if you're in
Seoul, South Korea you absolutely have to put this fish market on your itinerary
don't forget to pop down below hit that thumbs up button, hit subscribe, there is
going to be heaps more food videos from all over Korea we're in Seoul at the
moment and we are heading down to Busan so there is lots to come, thank you so
much for watching we'll see you next time, annyeong