If you’re visiting Korea, dakgomtang is one of the Korean dishes I most want to recommend.
Samgyetang is so famous as Korea’s chicken dish that few foreign visitors ever look for dakgomtang. Personally, though, I’d recommend dakgomtang even more.
Samgyetang is delicious, but it’s heavy and a bit too much for an everyday meal. Dakgomtang, on the other hand, is all about its clear, clean broth, which makes it a perfect, easygoing meal. And you don’t have to pick around any bones while eating.
In this post, I’ll introduce what dakgomtang is.
What Is Dakgomtang?
Simply put, dakgomtang is gomtang made with chicken (dak).
So what is gomtang? Even many Koreans find it hard to tell apart from similar soups.
Korean dishes that make a rich broth from meat, such as seolleongtang, are usually built around bones. Beef leg bones, called sagol, are simmered for hours to create a milky, rich broth.
Gomtang, however, focuses on the meat rather than the bones. Some restaurants don’t use bones at all and simmer only the meat.
The result is a broth that’s light rather than heavy and very easy to enjoy, though it takes a lot of work to make.
To make dakgomtang, a whole chicken is simmered with vegetables such as green onions, whole garlic and onions, depending on the cook.
Once the chicken is cooked, it’s taken out, cooled a little, deboned, and the meat is shredded by hand along the grain into thin strips.
The vegetables are removed and the fat is skimmed off the broth.
To serve, rice and shredded chicken go into a large bowl or a ttukbaegi (earthenware pot), and the broth is poured over them.
It’s topped with sliced green onions and finished with the restaurant’s own dadaegi, a chili seasoning paste.
Some restaurants serve the rice on the side.
Eating it is simple: just stir the dadaegi into the broth and enjoy.
Dakgomtang Restaurants Are Disappearing
Cheaper than pork or beef, dakgomtang was once a favorite meal of ordinary working people, but it’s slowly disappearing.
You can still find restaurants that serve it, but places that specialize only in dakgomtang have become really hard to find.
There are many reasons, but I think the biggest is Korea’s economic growth.
Koreans now have far more options for higher-calorie, stronger-flavored food they can eat out regularly. Amid this change, restaurants serving light, clean gomtang have been dwindling.
Dakgomtang also has two built-in problems.
The first is the hard labor. Every chicken has to be shredded by hand, so at a dakgomtang restaurant you’ll often see staff in a corner tearing through piles of chicken. On top of that, the fat has to be skimmed and chicken’s distinctive gamey smell has to be removed.
The second is that despite all this work, it’s hard to charge much. Since chicken is the main ingredient, it can’t be priced higher than beef or pork dishes.
As the generation that endured this work to run these restaurants retires, the specialty shops are closing one by one.
Still, I believe the real reason is how hard it is to make a broth that is clean and light yet full of flavor.
It takes skill to keep removing the rising chicken fat and odor, and the shredded meat has to stay balanced between dry and tender. Dakgomtang may look simple, but it’s anything but easy.
Recommended Dakgomtang Restaurant: Darak Two in Hongdae
I love dakgomtang and have tried it at many places, but the one that satisfied me most is Darak Two in Hongdae.
Located near the main gate of Hongik University, Darak Two is a dakgomtang specialist that has been in business for nearly 50 years.
If dakgomtang sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend a visit.
Darak Two
Phone: +82 2-336-2918
Address: 4-3, Wausan-ro21-Gil, Seoul South Korea
Hours: Mon–Sat 08:30–20:30 (Closed on Sundays)
I Hope Dakgomtang Lives On
As time goes by, dakgomtang may become truly hard to find.
Affordable everyday dishes like this are disappearing in Korea.
Dakgomtang restaurants that were once common near traditional markets now have to be searched for online.
I worry that in just 20 to 30 years, we may not be able to find them at all.
I hope the famous dakgomtang restaurants carry on for a long time to come.
