Samgyetang

Ingredients

• Poussin — 500-700 g each4
• Glutinous rice — soaked two hours200 g
• Ginseng root4
• Jujube dates8
• Garlic16 clove
• Chestnuts8
• Spring onions4
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Soak the glutinous rice in cold water for two hours and drain it.

   10 min

2. 2

   Rinse the birds, trim the excess fat at the cavity and pat them dry.

   12 min

3. 3

   Fill each cavity two-thirds with rice, adding a ginseng root, garlic, a chestnut and a jujube.

   15 min

4. 4

   Cross the legs and tuck one through a slit in the other; the cavity then closes without string.

   8 min

5. 5

   Pack the birds into a pot and add cold water just to cover them.

   5 min

6. 6

   Bring it up, skim, and simmer for an hour and a quarter.

   80 min

7. 7

   Serve each bird in its own bowl of broth, with salt and pepper on a separate saucer.

   8 min

About the dish

The bird is small — under a kilo, one per person. A grown chicken will not cook through in an hour and the rice inside it stays raw.

The rice is soaked but goes in raw, filling the cavity two-thirds full. It swells and drinks the broth from within — that is the mechanism of the dish.

Samgyetang is eaten on the hottest days of summer, during sambok. The logic is simple: heat inside against heat outside, and Koreans queue for it in July.

Worth knowing

• — The broth is not salted in the pot. Salt and pepper come separately and each person seasons their own bowl — that is the Korean norm for samgyetang.
• — Do not pack the rice to the top. Swelling, it splits the skin and the broth all runs into the pot.
• — Dried ginseng can replace fresh, but it goes in fifteen minutes earlier; it needs longer to give up its flavour.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

52 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Korea

• Bibimbap — Rice under separately cooked vegetables, meat and an egg, mixed with gochujang right before eating.
• Kimchi jjigae — A stew of over-fermented kimchi with pork and tofu. The older the kimchi, the better it works.
• Galbijjim — Beef short ribs braised in soy with pear, until the meat falls from the bone.