While shopping for budae-jjigae ingredients this afternoon, I had an interesting exchange with the local butcher. I had told him I was going to be making my favorite stew, and that I needed some ground beef. He gave me a look and said, "For budae-jjigae, you're supposed to use ground pork." This floored me. I gaped, but the guy was adamant.
"I've made it with beef many times," I said.
The butcher shook his head. "In Korea, we use ground pork."
Pork was cheaper—about half the price, per 100 grams, of the beef. So I relented and asked the man to grind up 400 grams of pig. He grabbed what looked to be half of a pig's ass, ran some ass-meat through the slicer, then took the sliced meat over to a grinder. 420 grams. Not a bad guess for having eyeballed his measurement.
Curious, I went online after coming back from the grocery and looked up some budae-jjigae recipes. Some recipes do indeed call for pork (see here, for instance). Some, however, go with beef (see here, and try to ignore the vomitous Christmas-lights border, as well as the ridiculously small amount of beef recommended: 50 grams, i.e., not even two ounces). Given how many types of budae-jjigae there are, I'd say it's up to you as to how you prepare your stew. There's no "This is how Koreans do it" rule. That's bullshit.
So fuck it—next time, I'm insisting on beef.
_
Friday, November 15, 2013
have I been doing it wrong this whole time?
3 comments:
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Yeah, I'd call BS, too. I've had it with beef, and that prepared by real live Koreans. Heck, I've had versions with both beef and pork.
ReplyDeleteBesides, the whole spirit of budae-jjigae is "throw whatever you have lying around into a pot and boil it." Insisting on a certain type of ingredient seems to go against that spirit.
I wonder: In this way, is budae-jjigae like organized religion, in that certain things that might have been completely random at the time have since become doctrine? Hmm.
"I wonder: In this way, is budae-jjigae like organized religion, in that certain things that might have been completely random at the time have since become doctrine? Hmm."
ReplyDeleteI'd say yes, of course. If you view organized religious traditions and budae-jjigae-making traditions through the lens of anthropology/sociology, they certainly have many traits in common, especially if tradition is the central working concept.
Was that too serious of an answer to a humorous question?
Well, I was being partly serious and partly humorous. Being a lit/folklore guy, I have a tendency to see everything through the lens of anthropology/sociology. It's sort of a sickness, I think.
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