I went back to the Guksu Jeonmun to order the gukbap. I got the chadolbagi gukbap, which was quite good, although, as you see, they served the rice on the side and left it up to me to dump the rice into the soup. That was a bit disappointing, but the broth was fantastic.
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Why was it disappointing that they didn't put the rice in beforehand? (This seems to be fairly standard practice, unless you're at a hardcore gukbap place.) Does it have something to do with there not being enough time for flavors to marry?
ReplyDeleteI actually like having the rice on the side, since Korean dishes usually come out hot enough to burn my face off, and I like having the option of letting the rice cool down a bit and then dumping that in to lower the temperature to a more human level.
I've been adding my own rice to Korean soups and stews since I was a kid, but I didn't start eating bona fide gukbap until I was in Daegu from 2013 to 2014. Pretty much all of the gukbap I had down there was like what I'd described in a previous post: the rice was put in, and the soup turned partway into a porridge. Getting rice on the side means that the rice has been cooked separately, so when I do add the rice to the soup, the Gestalt doesn't feel as integrated. Maybe it's just me.
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