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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Dongbu Looks Like Dung, But Tastes...

Always on the lookout for odd Korean food, I found one food that even my Korean friends did not know.
While exploring the newly christened S-Mart grocery store near my apartment, I discovered what appeared to be a bag of dried moose poops. It's called Dongbu (동부), which ironically sounds similar to the Korean word for poo, "ddong" (똥).
What does "Dongbu" really mean? My friend Suyeon Jung attempted to contact Jungdun Foods, the Daegu based company that produces Dongbu; however, they declined to answer any of her questions. One friend, Jerry Park said "dong" means west. Another friend, Junsik Park, supposed that "bu" could mean bean. "Western bean?" It could look like a large kidney bean, but poop is far more fun.

And while it looks like poop, it happily neither smells or tastes like poop. In appearance and texture it is reminiscent of Boston Baked Beans, the more familiar candy-coated, peanut, poop-like snack. The difference is that Dongbu has a dry, cookie center (they call it fried hard tack) instead of a peanut, and a thinner shell. Imagine a round, crunchy animal cookie with a chocolate shellac that does not taste in the least like chocolate.
It doesn't taste so bad either. Junsik had never heard of it when I mass messaged him and my other Korean friends about Dongbu. His first question upon seeing it in person was, "Is it good or not?" I asked him to decide for himself. He picked up the bag, opened it, and cautiously sniffed the opening before taking one out and eating it. "Just a snack," he exclaimed laughing, as if he had expected something else — perhaps poop? It was good, he said.
Not everyone agrees, though. I showed Dongbu to my friend Nanhee Kim as well. "I've never eaten [it] before," she said surprised. "Can I try this? It looks like [a] bean, red bean." She didn't like it.
There is more to the food than taste, though. Oh, what puerile fun can be had with a bag of Korean, candied, cookie, moose poops!

A few strategically placed Dongbu pooplets in the right classroom at a certain English academy which shall remain namelessand by break time teachers and students were joyfully preparing "poop packages" for each other and asking me for "ddong" to eat or perhaps gift. Interestingly, the students, experts in all things snack food, who I asked had never seen Dongbu before. One student even said it tasted like wood. She must have liked it, because she kept on asking for more. Perhaps the moose that produced that particular bag had a very fibrous diet.

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A "Chinese Soju"

There is no question of soju's popularity in South Korea. Jinro soju sold 61.38 million cases in 2011. It is the most consumed liquor brand in the world followed by Smirnoff vodka in a distant second place of 24.7 million cases sold. For those seeking more variety in their clear liquor consumption, however, there is an alternative to Korea's ubiquitous, green bottle: China's little, green bottle.

Goryangju (고량주), as it is called in Korea, is 125mL of apple scented throat cancer. Easily found in grocery stories and Chinese restaurants around Korea, at 56 percent alcohol, it is used by Korean magicians for flame effects, chefs for flambé, and senior university students for hazing noobs with "soju shots" at their favorite Chinese restaurant. Having been victimized by this last use while he was in school, my friend Junsik Park (26) decided to introduce me to one of his collegiate sufferings while we were eating at a Chinese style, barbecued, lamb-bits-on-a-stick restaurant in my home district of Yongi-dong in the city of Pyeongtaek.

One bottle of Chamisul Original soju was already empty on the table and a second bottle of the 20 percent alcohol liquor had already been started when Junsik related his goryangju story from his university days in Seoul.  Before long the petit, red-labeled bottle was sitting on our table among empty lamb skewers and a pit of hot coals, while Junsik lit a spoonful of the stuff on fire with his cigarette lighter. This led to yet another novel use of the liquor to add to the list: lighting up. 

Junsik, an amateur chef by hobby, (and a pretty good one in my experience) also claims that Goryangju is useful for eliminating fishy smells from fish dishes. So far, though, goryangju only seems useful for adolescent-minded pyromaniacs. 

But can you drink it? 

You can try.

There is a reason why the third most consumed brand of liquor in the world is Chum-Churum soju and not Goryangju. Excuse me while I go light something on fire.

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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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