Gopchang Jeongol

An intestine hotpot whose entire success is decided by rubbing them with flour and salt before anything else happens.

Beef, Fish. Not vegetarian — contains beef, fish, intestine.

Ingredients

To clean and blanch

• 1 kg beef small intestines, gopchang
• 4 tablespoons plain flour
• 4 tablespoons coarse salt, rubbed on and not eaten
• 1 piece ginger, 5 cm, sliced
• 100 ml rice wine

For the pot

• 300 g Korean radish, in thin slices
• 1 onion, sliced
• 200 g cabbage, in strips
• 150 g mushrooms
• 1.2 litres anchovy and kelp stock, as on its own page
• 3 tablespoons gochugaru
• 2 tablespoons doenjang
• 1 tablespoon gochujang
• 8 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• a handful of perilla leaves, shredded
• 4 spring onions, in 5 cm lengths
• salt

Method

1. THE INTESTINES ARE RUBBED WITH FLOUR AND SALT BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. Four tablespoons of each, worked in hard with the hands for three or four minutes, then rinsed, then done again. The flour drags the mucus off and the salt is the abrasive. This is the entire dish: cleaned properly, gopchang is rich and faintly sweet, and cleaned carelessly it is inedible in a way that no amount of chilli, garlic or doenjang will cover. Nobody at the table will blame the chilli.
2. AND THEN THEY ARE BLANCHED IN WINE AND GINGER AND THE WATER THROWN AWAY. Ten minutes at a boil with the rice wine and ginger slices, then drained and rinsed again. Two separate operations doing the same job and both are needed.
3. THE OUTER FAT IS LEFT ON AND THE INNER MATTER IS NOT. Worth being exact about: the creamy fat on the outside is what makes gopchang worth eating and is not trimmed. What comes out in the flour and salt is the lining.
4. THEY ARE SIMMERED AN HOUR BEFORE THEY GO IN THE POT. Intestine is collagen and takes an hour to turn from rubber to soft; added raw to a hotpot that cooks for twenty minutes they are impossible to chew and the dish is ruined at the table rather than in the kitchen.
5. AND THE POT IS COOKED AT THE TABLE on a burner, with stock added as it reduces, which is what jeongol means here as against a stew brought in finished.
6. Intestines cut into 8 cm lengths. Rubbed hard with half the flour and half the salt for 3 to 4 MINUTES, then rinsed through several changes of water.
7. REPEATED with the remaining flour and salt, and rinsed until the water runs clear.
8. Covered with water with the rice wine and ginger, boiled 10 MINUTES, then DRAINED and rinsed. The pot washed.
9. Returned to fresh water and simmered 1 HOUR, until a piece gives easily when pressed. Drained.
10. The gochugaru, doenjang, gochujang, garlic and soy sauce stirred to a paste.
11. A wide shallow pot loaded with the radish, onion, cabbage and mushrooms arranged around the edge, the intestines in the middle, and the paste spooned over the centre.
12. The stock poured gently down the side.
13. Brought to the boil at the table and simmered 15 to 20 MINUTES, the paste stirred through once it has loosened.
14. Tasted and salted.
15. The perilla leaves and spring onions thrown on, and eaten from the pot with steamed rice as on its own page, with more stock added as it reduces.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes