The Bing-eo Don't Bite but We Do.

I've eaten some crazy things in Korea, but by far the nuttiest died between my molars last weekend. 

On a bright Saturday morning my friend Young-Jung "Jerry" Park and I drove two hours to the rural town of Yangpyeong (양평) on the far Eastern border of Gyeonggi province, close to Gangwon-do. The area is known for many things, like being a comfortable retirement area, insanely delicious blood stew, and a yearly festival celebrating a tiny fish called bing-eo (빙어).  

The name literally translates to "ice fish," but we would recognize it better as a species of smelt. The fish is generally about the size of a pinky, though I saw some longer than my middle finger. And they are traditionally fished in Korea's rivers and lakes during the winter months. This is hardly a trophy sport, though. This is a culinary treat on the level of sannakji (산낙지), live octopus, and one that isn't nearly as well known.

Bing-eo on the ice. We found these dead on arrival.

Bing-eo can be battered and deep fried or gutted and eaten whole, but there is a far more spine-tingling method. Like a pelican with a herring, they are often eaten right out of the water, not just raw but wiggling with the breath of life still present in their gills. 

According to Jerry, a native Korean, the attraction in eating creatures alive is in the freshness of their flavor. Whether in Korea or America, fresh has the connotation of wholesome deliciousness. Except Koreans take the concept to levels we traditionally did not. Have you ever heard that cooking a fish right after catching it is tastier than cooking one from the market? Take that idea one step further and you end up skipping the fire altogether and get sashimi. Take that idea yet another step and for the ultimate experience in the freshest flavor imaginable you have to eat it alive. To get any fresher you'd have to jump in the water and try to bite the critters as they swim. 

I've eaten a lot of raw animals in Asia. And, as far as fish goes, I'm totally behind the fresher is better philosophy. However, I may have reached my limit. I have eaten the tamer version of sannakji, freshly removed octopus tentacles. But I've never eaten an animal that was still struggling to survive. Though it was still moving, that octopus was solidly defeated. The bing-eo I ate were still fighting. 

A live fish does not taste much different from good sashimi, but it does take a different kind of courage than eating a plate of defeated sannakji. Beyond the cultural taboo, the "eww gross" factor, eating something alive adds a new emotional element to wrestle with. 

Families bend over their fishing holes at
Yangpyeong's 2014-2015 Winter Bing-eo Festival.

Most people raised in the industrial world today are far removed from the slaughtering of their food. But eating bing-eo alive goes beyond this. It even goes beyond a fox stealing a chicken for dinner, because at least the chicken is dead when the fox eats it. No, this is like Donald Gennaro being eaten off the toilet by the T.rex in Jurassic Park. The hapless lawyer is still conscious when the beast sinks his teeth into his torso. In the case of bing-eo, the intelligence levels are reversed. Still, it is alive as it is being eaten. It isn't for long; nevertheless, that is a lot to handle for someone who releases house spiders in the garden and steps over ant hills. 

So how does one deal with it? People take different approaches. My friend Jerry, for instance, had a fun perspective. He fancied himself a hungry giant reaching into a village of people with his chopsticks. I, on the other hand, was a bit more down to earth. From the start of the trip, the idea of eating fish alive reminded me of a grizzly bear pawing at migrating salmon. So as I fished bing-eo out of the bowl of water with my chopsticks, I transformed into a hungry grizzly standing in the middle of a roaring stream picking at the leaping salmon. 

Perhaps a psychosocial study can be done on how people rationalize eating lesser animals alive, but one thing was clear from Jerry and my experiences. We both thought the most active fish were probably the healthier to eat. No one wants to eat a floater or a weak, sickly one. That entirely contradicts a major reason behind eating food as fresh as possible. So if you ever find yourself in a village being attacked by a hungry giant or as fish migrating upstream amid famished bears, don't move. 

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Nolbu-ne Has Guts

Sizzling sogopchang, beef intestines

Do you consider yourself a brave person when it comes to food?

Well if you have the guts to eat them, Nolbu-ne Gopchang (놀부네곱창) has the guts to serve you — cow guts to be exact. 

Gopchang before cooking. It is flanked by cuts of fresh liver.

I visited the small barbecue restaurant in Hapjeong-dong, Pyeongtaek last week after succumbing to months of longing for small intestines. Called gop-chang (곱창) in Korean, it used to be a regular dinner among my male hagwon friends. Late at night, after hours in front of excited or indifferent kids, we vented our spleens, eased our livers, and forgot the galling students by grilling tender rings of pig intestines. Soju, which is commonly drunk with gop-chang, played no small part as well. Those friends have since moved away, but the occasional craving for gopchang remains. 

Nolbu-ne is not my old gopchang restaurant standby. Nevertheless it is especially good, and it excels in an area where my former restaurant did not. Nolbu-ne has more guts.

In addition to gopchang, the menu consists of a range of beef offal including makchang (막창) and daechang (대창), sections of the intestinal tract dressed in different ways. I had never encountered daechang before, but the owner said the main difference between it and gopchang was that daechang was completely cleaned out. Yes, this implies that gopchang still has digested stuff inside. If that doesn't deter you from trying this adventurous dish, Nolbu-ne's side dishes might. 

Saeng-gan, raw liver (bottom)

The three sides are also beef offal. One is seonji-guk (선지국), congealed cow blood stew. The other two are saeng-gan (생간), raw liver, and cheon-yeop (천엽), raw tripe. Seonji-guk is a rich and often peppery stew that is great on cold-weather days. It has that warm, affirming boost that makes the cold bearable. Saeng-gan is a little harder to stomach. In your mouth it is soft almost to the point of jello. It tastes less minerally than cooked liver. In fact, it is quite mild. But it is almost unbearably bloody. I have a Korean friend who loves the dish because it makes her feel like a vampire. I, on the other hand, while I enjoyed it, had to ignore the bright, crimson streaks left behind on the white, plastic plate to be able to psychologically bear the liver. The cheon-yeop, however, wasn't as hard to stomach. It essentially resembles a thin, grey shag rug cut into strips, and doesn't have much flavor. 

While the menu at Nolbu-ne comes from an umm... poopier part of the cow, everything that I tried smelled and tasted fresh and clean. There were no foul flavors or strange aftertastes. The gopchang did have a lot of fat attached. However, as in bacon, the fat only enhanced the flavor of the intestines. 

A strip of cheon-yeop, raw tripe

Some Americans may wonder why Koreans eat such things. When eating in Korea, one should bear in mind that modern Korean cuisine is heavily influenced by the nation-wide poverty that lies only a generation away. My friend Jerry Park, who ate with me, mentioned that he normally didn't eat saeng-gan and cheon-yeop because they were "ajashi food" — dishes more common to his father's generation. That generation grew up in a very different Korea than the one that we see now. Even in America, though, eating offal has not always been so taboo. Foi gras, beef tongue, scrapple, pickled trotters or chitterlings anyone? And if those dishes make you uneasy, sausages are a strong reminder of just how prevalent animal intestines still are in our own cuisine. So if you do happen to enjoy meat, take courage and at least give gopchang a try. Think of it as traditional Korean sausage.

Nolbu-ne Gopchang

2014.12.9 | 지도 크게 보기 ©  NAVER Corp.

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A Seaweed Fizzle, but a Chip Success!

Pringles are probably the most popular American potato chip in South Korea. They are found in seemingly every mart, grocery, and corner store. My local Lotte Mart even has a whole shelf dedicated to the snack, providing ever more proof that "once you pop, you can't stop." 

This being Korea, though, there are bound to be some unique flavor twists to that famous, stacked chip. Salt and Seaweed Pringles is one of them. 

Just like the Japanese, Koreans eat a lot of seaweed. My favorite use is in Kimbap (김밥), a sort of Korean style California roll. The Koreans also turn them into soup, salads, side dishes and salted sheets served with beer. This last one is called gim (김), better known in the US as nori, and it is the inspiration behind the flavor of Salt and Seaweed Pringles. 

My first impression upon eating them was to wonder where the seaweed flavor was. Korean Pringles tend to be subtly flavored anyways, so it was no surprise. Yet, true to their advertising, I couldn't help but continue eating. As I did, the chips actually started to taste more like the lone, dried seaweed sheets I generally avoid at bars. Many adore salted gim. However, served alone, I prefer to wrap them around my teeth and pretend to be toothless. Nevertheless, half a tube vanished into the black hole of my face before I decided to save some for the NetBot, Eat Korea's mechanical guinea pig. 

A number of weeks had passed by the time I introduced Salt and Seaweed Pringles to the NetBot, so the chips were stale. Nevertheless, the NetBot was determined to try them anyway. This was her response:

"Mmm, I like them. And I do not even like seaweed." She paused after eating and asked, "do you have another one?"

The NetBot was given another chip. "There's no seaweed flavor," she continued before clarifying, "not the bad kind that I don't like." 

She got another chip. "I really like it. I'm really shocked!" But these weren't fresh seaweed chips. "Maybe I like them because they're stale," she mused. "Maybe I like them because they're soft."

Fresh or stale, though, the verdict is in! Seaweed Pringles don't taste much like seaweed. But even when stale, they are worth every single soft, salty bite. 

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Goats Beware: You are Delicious and... Healthy?

The first time I ever tasted a goat I genuinely tasted goat. It wasn't meat I ate, it was cheese. I was having lunch with family at the Ritz Carlton in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, and among the finer things laid out on the table was a local, artisan goat cheese. It tasted like goat, and not in a good way. My childhood best friend's family owned a hobby goat farm. We spent most of our summers wandering around that farm, hurding goats around, feeding them, milking them, stepping in their poop. So I known their smell intimately well, and that cheese captured the essence of a live goat.

The second time I tasted goat was a little closer to the capital. My Haitian aunt had prepared a banquet for a friend's baby shower. I escaped the shower, but not before she made me try her goat stew — a delicious recipe imported from her island.

The third time was on the other side of the planet at about the same latitude — the 38th parallel. This time the animal was just as much medicinal as it was gastronomical, and the results made me a confirmed lover of goat.

In downtown Pyeongtaek, as you walk away from AK Plaza, you will find Daejeon Heuk Yeomso Gukbap (대전흑염소국밥), which means "Daejeon Black Goat Stew" in English. It is far down the street on your left, guarded by a church and set back on the side of a hill between a garden supply store and a flower shop

With its rust holes; plastic siding; crumbling pavement; and squishy, yellow, linoleum floors, it isn't the fanciest of places; but most truly great Korean eateries tend to look like potential relics of the Korean War, and this is one of them.

The menu isn't very diverse since Korean restaurants tend to specialize in a single perfected dish. There are two styles of goat stew: one with more meat (teuk yeomso gukbap 특염소국밥) and a cheaper one (yeomso gukbap 염소국밥) with less. Those who want to share a pot of goat stew can order the yeomso jeongol (염소전골). For a little variety, there is the expensive goat mu-chim (yeomso mu-chim 염소무침), which is sauced goat meat and vegetables.

My friend and guide, Park Junsik, and I ordered the more meaty goat stew for lunch. Like most traditonal Korean meals the dish is accompanied by a variety of sides. There weren't many, just the basics: a plate of kimchi, a bowl of rice, and another dish with raw garlic and hot peppers with ssamjang (쌈장) sauce for dipping. Additional sauces and spices like dadegi (다대기), a spicy-salty-oceanie paste, were provided for altering the stew to suit your taste or for dipping your chunks of tender goat meat.


While there were not many sides, they weren't needed. The black, ceramic bowls of stew, which seemed to contain just enough food to satisfy at first, contained more than enough to gorge us both to near discomfort. And neither of us had a full stomach when we walked in. All Junsik had eaten that day was a glass of orange juice. I had eaten breakfast, but since then had only eaten a slice of toast and a kumquat.

Shikgochujang and perilla seeds

The spicy, peppery stew was fantastic. It did not take many spoonfuls before Junsik exclaimed, "Oh! I fall in love. Really good." He continued to groan in delight throughout the meal as I took pictures and tapped notes on my phone. True to the menu, the stews we got were loaded with large chunks of goat meat. Goat is definitely a dark, gamey meat, but for those who aren't fond of the flavor, the accompanying shikgochujang (식고추장) dip mixed with perilla seeds completely cut the gamey flavor.


Interestingly enough, the flavor of the stew is strikingly similar to boshintang (보신탕), Korea's controversial dog stew. In fact, the last time I had boshintang one of my dining mates, an American, compared the flavor of dog to the flavor of goat. I had not tasted goat at the time, so I could only take them at their word, but now I see what they were talking about.

Also like boshintang, goat stew is reputed to be good for one's health. This is hardly surprising since it seems virtually every Korean food is advertised as quasi-medicinal. But of the many animals on their menu, like dog, goat meat in particular is considered curative.

According to an academic article published by the College of Natural Resources at Daegu University by Min Taigi and co-authors, there are records of goat meat being used for "healing and prevention from certain diseases... in old literatures in Korea and China." The tradition continues today. According to the article, goat meat is "a healthy food that helps the seasonal attunement of the human body." Apparently the smell of goat meat doesn't help its popularity in Korea (ours smelled fine). As a result of this, it is more commonly consumed in extract form. Yes, somewhere a beverage is made from boiled down goat flesh mixed with herbs as a part of Korean traditonal medicine. I can't imagine that it would smell better than the meat, but, smelly or not, the extract supposedly makes a fine gift for aging parents who are growing forgetful and brittle of bone. It reportedly also promotes health in pregnant women, discharged patients, mentally drained students, and men looking to enhance the powers of their own meat.

Such medicinal claims are common enough, more than making them a tough pill to swallow; nevertheless, Junsik seemed to benefit from the goat. Having not slept at all the night before because he was sending out job applications, he was unsurprisingly tired. Yet after lunch he claimed he felt better. "I feel like it makes us healthly," he said. Not only was he no longer tired, but he said his blood felt fresher. I'm not sure what "fresh blood" feels like, perhaps it is the feeling of radiating warmth that the dish provokes in your limbs.

Could this mean that goat stew does in fact help students who have pulled all nighters and found their minds reduced to well, an extract? Or is it more likely the starved and exhausted Junsik merely gave his body what it needed — food?

Before you pass judgement, try a steaming bowl of goat stew yourself and see what happens. Maybe your health will be better for it.

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Blog: Is Ssallo Byeol Gluten Free?

I don't often eat snack foods, but when I do I eat original flavor Ssallo Byeol (쌀로별 오리지날). Unlike other Korean snacks it can't moonlight as a sugary breakfast cereal. It has the caramelized salty-sweetness of soy sauce instead. It also it doesn't crash my energy level like the other snacks do — a key trait for a snack if you're a teacher.

Anyhow, I always assumed it was only made with rice, because ssal (쌀) means rice. So I got really excited when I saw it at MiniStop, a Korean convenience store chain, last week. It was the first day of the year that was warm enough to sit outside and write in the park, so I was preparing a small picnic for myself. Naturally, excited by the prospect of a gluten free snack, I bought the lumpy, tan rice balls.

Later on I was sitting on the floor of a Korean style gazebo — the kind traditionally used by scholars and poets to muse and compose. With my iPad in my lap, a bottle of ice tea at hand, and a pile of empty string-cheese wrappers nearby, I contemplated just how gluten-free Ssallo Byeol really was.

It took me approximately 15 minutes more or less to translate the ingredients. To cut down on time one can look for mil (밀), the Korean word for wheat. This is what my friend Lauren Andrews does. She is one of the few people I know who lives in Korea with celiac disease. However, I wanted to be as complete in my translation as I could just to be sure. This is what I found:

Imported rice with a list of related ingredients and import information I could not completely translate. I also found white sugar and starch syrup. I wondered what the source of the starch was, but as I read on I found out it didn't matter. Next up on the list was tapioca starch and a mix of soy sauces. And in that mix was — wheat (dundundun!). Next on the list was brewed soy sauce, tomato juice, pea protein, red pepper paste, wheat starch (more dundundun!), some special salt I can't completely translate, and onion powder. Lastly came the usuall and not at all bizarre allergy warning that it was manufactured in a facility that processes milk, peanuts, and shrimp. Korean snacks are processed with shrimp?! Yes. In fact, there are a lot of shrimp flavored snacks in Korea. Shellfish alergenated people beware.

I can eat shrimp. But I can't eat wheat, so goodbye crispy rice balls that betray your gluten free origins.

 

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Dear Stomachs,

Consider the opportunity to contemplate a table of uniquely bizarre foods while gazing upon the Yellow Sea. On one dish is a pile of squirming octopus tentacles. On another plate you see something that was once alive and may still be, but now it resembles a Cadbury cream orange goo. On yet another plate you discover sometimes writhing strips cut from a disturbingly phallic sea worm. Nearby is a bucket of enormous, live shrimp on ice. The man next to you casually snatches one out of the pail, snaps off its head off and peels it in one motion before dipping it in a red sauce and eats it. If seafood is not to your liking, on another day you might find yourself in town with Western friends eating grilled sheep or cow intestines while cautioning your dinner-mates about the intact "cream-filled" ones. This is the life of the writer of Eat Korea.

Eat Korea strives to be a guide to the amazing and sometimes bizarre world of Korean and expat food. In this land I found useable blankets, ear-muffs and coffee mugs taped to cereal boxes at Lotte Mart. I picked boiled silk-worm pupae out of a dixie-cup at a green-tea festival nestled in the verdant slopes of a tea plantation. I enjoyed the most amazing noodle soup on the planet under the grime dripping tarp of an outdoor restaurant hidden under an overpass. Heads and all, I ate dried, tiny fishies dipped in ketchup while standing on a mountain top. I was invigorated by the flesh of "man's best friend." And I even tasted a fresh apple and seaweed salad during an unexpected stay in a Korean hospital.

Eating in South Korea is always an adventure. But you do not have to explore blindly. Whether you are thinking of visiting the country, moving here or even if you already live here, Eat Korea is your guide to the adventure of Korean cuisine (But primarily in Pyeongtaek).

Yes, sometimes it is moving. But go ahead. Meok-aw 먹어 (Eat!) !

Sincerely,
Michael T.S. Farrell

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