Culinary Explorer
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Dak-baeksuk (Whole Boiled Chicken Soup)
Created by Chef Jeong-sun
A whole chicken simmered plainly with garlic, jujube, and ginger until the meat loosens from the bone, served with salt at the table and followed by rice cooked in the broth.
Not every whole chicken soup with jujube is samgyetang. Dak-baeksuk is plainer, older in feeling, and less eager to explain itself: chicken, water, garlic, a few red jujubes, and time. No rice stuffed inside. No heavy herbal perfume. The broth is the reason you came.
Master Seong-nyeo made us watch the simmer, not the clock. A hard boil tears the skin, clouds the broth, and tightens the breast; a low, quiet bubble gives soft meat and a broth clear enough to drink from a spoon. Notebook 31 says one 1.4 kilogram chicken, 3 liters water, 12 garlic cloves, 4 jujubes, 2 coins ginger. That is not the whole tradition, but it is the measure that feeds four without guessing.
Tonight it asks for patience more than skill. Trim the fat, skim the first foam, keep the pot quiet, and don't season the broth like a stew. Each person salts the chicken at the table, then the last of the broth becomes juk (rice porridge). That second meal is not leftovers. It is the promise the first pot made.
Ingredients
whole chicken
Quantity
1, 1.3 to 1.5kg
giblets removed
cold water
Quantity
12 cups
plus up to 2 cups more if needed
garlic cloves
Quantity
12 large
peeled
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| whole chickengiblets removed | 1, 1.3 to 1.5kg |
| cold waterplus up to 2 cups more if needed | 12 cups |
| garlic clovespeeled | 12 large |
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