One of the many local variations of meat on a stick wins a dubious honor (Al Dente):
It may look modest compared to the rest of this list, but don’t let the lack of preposterous toppings fool you. The French Fry Hot Dog on a Stick will stick your arteries like Velcro. This South Korean specialty dog is covered in thick-cut french fries and deep fried. Top it with some melted cheese and you’re on your way to bypass boulevard.
If you follow the link, you will see that they are not talking about your ordinary double-deep fried corn dogs.
Via Instapundit.
27 Comments
Not only unhealthy, but also sparklingly disgusting. Give me some dried cuttlefish cooked over a yontan stove and an OB, my diet for some of the 1980s.
[gag]
So there might actually be a worse Korean culinary invention than 부대찌개! They probably slather it in mayonnaise too.
[puking]
In my eleven years in country, I’ve never once been tempted to try that thing.
What’s wrong with 부대찌개? I like 부대찌개.
What’s wrong with 부대찌개? Fake fatty meats and cheese mixed with red pepper causing indigestion and explosive diarrhea is what’s wrong with it. I eat spicier than the Koreans and always thought I had an ironclad stomach, but mixing in grease with spice is rather unpleasant for me.
Before coming to Korea again to work at Samsung, I worked for Cabot Corporation in the US. I once came on a business trip with the general and sales managers of my division, and they had to try 부대찌개 and thought it was so funny after the president of our 무역회사 in Korea told them about it. I warned them against it, but they wouldn’t listen. The general manager’s face was green and the sales manager stayed in his hotel room the next day. It was rather amusing.
Another 부대찌개 fan here. I thought the dish looked disgusting as I watched it bubbling in the hot pot the first time I tried it. The processed meats used in Korea are extremely unhealthy, but I never ate a dish with cheese, only meat, veggies, rice cakes, and pepper paste. I make 부대찌개 at home using lots of veggies, tofu, and half a hot dog.
부대찌개 rocks! Sometimes you get a decent one in a neighborhood restaurant or at Nolbu, but there’s a pretty good place in Itaewon - in the 3rd alley, across from Bungalow - where you can customize exactly which ingredients You want in your 찌개. Bacon, ham, Italian sausage, extra cheese, extra beans, etc.
On the other hand, those freaky looking hotdogs are pretty bad. I’m ashamed to admit that I tried one a couple of years back. Chucked it after just a bite or two.
I think 부대찌개 is a culinary atrocity. It lacks both creativity and nutritional value. If I wanted to introduce a friend to Korean food, 부대찌개 would be the last on my list. And this is coming from someone who likes bundaegi.
As for the fry-dog: congrats to South Korea for showing they can produce Western style garbage on par with American pseudo-food crap. It’s like watching D-War hold it’s own in awfulness with Hollywood trash.
Those hotdogs are vile, that crap is simply not food. 부대찌개 is almost as bad as those revolting rubbish imitation food products. Hotdogs and 부대찌개 make McDonald’s food look like 3 star Michelin star cuisine!
It’s interesting that in many countries culinary traditions (notably France and Italy’s) poverty and the dire need for economy in the kitchen eventually produced the best food. Good, fresh ingredients, cooked simply- but with great attention to detail.
In Korea they just throw food that belongs more on a compost heap than in a stomach in a pot of water and boil it up.
At least the peasants of Rome, Provence, Sicily and elsewhere knew how to make great use of cheap bits.
I love 부대찌개 because it’s American imperialism in a bowl!
@7
The customized version you describe sounds a lot more pleasant than the typical back-alley swill.
@8-10
LOL!
Damn… I wanna eat a hot dog / fry encrusted corn dog! Looks good!
부대찌개? Best summary of 부대찌개 here:
“I blame this mutation on the Korean War. When meat was scarce in the years during and after the war, Koreans made do with whatever they could scavenge from the surplus from the US armed forces bases - Spam and hotdogs. To make these items edible for Koreans, the locals mixed them together with the paste gochujang in a makeshift stew named “Budae jjigae” (부대찌개) - literally “base stew”. Over the subsequent fifty years, the locals have grown to love the processed meat-flavored soup and it now graces franchise restaurant menus, the only difference being that the stew now contains actual meat along with the mechanically-separated variety.
There seems to be no particular rules to making the stew, insofar that you need gochujang and hotdogs to start, and then whatever seems to be lying about the average Korean kitchen to continue: kimchi, frozen dumplings, greens, ramen, rice cake, actual meat. 50 years of hotdog flavoured broth has to do strange things to your palate and drive you towards experimenting with hotdogs in an obscene and deep-fried manner.”
Got it here:
http://www.lastappetite.com/fr.....ed-hotdog/
As User-81 said… it’s American Imperialism in a bowl!
What is missing here is the fact Military soup was born out of the trash cans outside the posts. It is really garbage can soup.
@12’s quote is spot on. Post war poverty can devastate a nations palate. Britain has now at last shaken most of its image as a nation of backwards food0′tards. My mum for example who grew up in the post-war year cannot cook at all, almost everything is pre-packaged or comes out of a bottle.
I am, and many brits of my generation are quite handy in the kitchen. I even make my own stocks and demiglace. And cook a wide variety of meals from scratch.
Korea will hopefully get out of its ‘nostalgia’ for eating nasty badly-prepared muck. I’ve actually seen in the time I’ve been here a fair bit of progress in this regard but they have a really long way to go in general.
As far as the original post, I gotta say the third one looks tempting to me actually. As far as the Korean fry dog, I would be game if it was not for two facts. One, the Korean hot dog is so starch and meat-extenders that its practically tasteless. Two, the coating is not corn based as in the classic US corn dog (that sweet batter contrasts well with the salty dog and the vinegar mustard…ahhooo….sorry had a Homer Simpson moment).
For the Budejigae, I am kinda split on its merits.
First, those who look at French cooking as a model can’t be serious. Too much of what we think of French cooking today is really Escoffier’s extravagance. Today much of this extravagance has diapered in the face of our absolute rise in prosperity.
Let’s take something simple and typically French, mayonnaise. Today the ingredients are simple cheap ingredients, egg, oil, salt, and pepper. The extravagance today is in the preparation time and the deft touch of the Saucier. However let’s look at this from the standpoint the French peasants you want to romanticize. While chickens lay eggs at a decent pace, the cost and space associated to keep them are pretty steep. Add to this the French Corn Laws that put a premium on those inputs made keeping chickens a small luxury (or from a more local perspective, look at in Korea how a simple boiled egg is considered a snack, but one that once denoted a bit of luxury). Second we have the oil. Even if we turn to Provence and use prodigious olive, oil is a product of quite a lot of man hours of harvest and crushing. Indeed olive oil was once such a valued good that it was a highly sought commodity in the ancient world. We can likewise talk of the rarity of salt and pepper in the same tones. Wars were fought over pepper, and salt was once more valuable than gold.
All of these ingredients were as valued as they once were by Escoffier’s time, yet I would wager all these ingredients were valued much highly and treated more as rarities than we do today. We can similarly look at what we think as “French Peasant” food in a similar light. Any idea how rare it was to catch Dover Sole? Soaking a capon in a vast quantity of wine to make Coq-au-vin at a time when wine was literally equated with “clean water” and treated just as valuable? Sure Pot-au-Feu is a basic dish, yet I wager the cuts and qualities (not to mention amounts) of meat called for today would be dreamy fantasy to the peasant (or a waste of good meat). So don’t give the crap about how peasant Frenchmen (or even Italians, Chinese, etc.) had it so good despite poverty.
Getting back to Budejigae, the preparation is simple. Yet it has all sorts of places to play with in selection of ingredients. You could very textures, colors, and freshness. You can even change to the quality of some of the ingredients to make something better. What amuses me though is despite the opportunities the only variation seems to be “4 or 5 heaping spoons of chili pepper powder?”.
It’s as if Leonardo di Vinci got himself a nice piece of canvas, all the paints he could dream of, and Mona Lisa, then he chose to draw a smiley face with the claim “No its great! Can’t you tell I used Yellow #1 instead of #2?” What then angers me is everyone wants to debate if the smiley face is best with #1 or #2, not the fact this it’s a horrible representation of Mona Lisa.
somewhere in Jongno, a street vendor will hear about this list and think, “Second place? Second place is for saps! Maybe if I wrap the sausage in bacon and deep fry it once BEFORE I dip it in batter, and then again AFTER, Korea can be hub of deadly fatty hot dog foods”
“What amuses me though is despite the opportunities the only variation seems to be “4 or 5 heaping spoons of chili pepper powder?”.”
There are a number of variations out there, but there’s nothing stopping one from customizing it further at home. 부대찌개 is pretty easy to cook, and no more difficult to modify to one’s tastes than fried rice.
# 14,
Yes… but “base” sounds so much better then “garbage.”
쓰레기찌개? Ewwww…
@#19
That probably explains why no one orders “Garbage Pizza” at the local Native New Yorkers in my neighborhood, despite it being basically the same as “Supreme Pizza”.
The last time I was in Korea I saw a sign for a restaurant that advertised “의정부식 부대고기찌개”…were the garbage cans at Camp Red Cloud better stocked?
#21, Uijeongbu has lately become noted for its selection of 부대찌개 restaurants, so places outside the area might try to tap into their popularity by saying they do it Uijeongbu style.
#14, I’m sure there was some dumpster diving going on after the 6.25 police action, but I was told by a Korean War vet that the folks who gathered leftovers and discarded food from the military bases had large garbage pails specifically to collect this food. It’s still discarde things d food, but they weren’t picking out hot dog wieners from cigarette butts and used napkins and.
So, what’s the “의정부” style 부대찌개? Is there a difference?
On a personal note, I use spam, chopped kielbasa, and a bit of bacon. Dumplings and tofu are a bit too adventurous for me
^^ Tofu is too adventurous for you? What an odd thought process, considering tofu is a common ingredient in most jigae.
What’s wrong with 부대찌개, aside from its history? I love it, it’s a very good meal on a chilly winter night. Good thing here in the Philippines the local Korean restaurants also have it.
LittleBrownAsian… pay no heed to these spoiled, petty bourgeoisie, people raised in first world countries by parents who are also raised in first world countries. They have no concept of a world where most people can’t choose what they eat and have to eat what’s immediately available in their environment.
They think the entire world shops in supermarkets just like them…