Samgyetang Weather

The weather has cooled down a bit now but a couple of days ago when it was nearing the 100s and the humidity was way too high, I suggested that we have 삼계탕 for dinner. For anyone who's not familiar with it, it's a whole chicken stuffed with sweet rice and boiled in a broth of ginseng, jujubes, chestnuts, garlic and ginger . SG jumped at the idea and Dorothy sounded excited too.

In America, I think samgyetang would be much more of a cold winter day soup, but in Korea when the weather gets really steamy and close to unbearable, people start looking for good places to eat samgyetang. I guess the theory behind eating it in hot weather is that it is supposedly so full of nutrients that you can replace those that you've lost through sweating. Another reason may be tied to the "fight fire with fire" theory in Korea, which just basically goes that if you're really hot, eat something even hotter and you'll feel cool. I think the basic idea is to sweat a lot in the hopes that this will produce a cooling effect. Those two explanations seem a bit contradictory but at any rate, we've had some good samgyetang weather here in Vermont lately.

Here's a recipe for samgyetang taken from Practical Korean Cooking with a few pointers of my own thrown in for good measure. You can find samgyetang kits at Korean markets that have all the dried ingredients plus the sweet rice.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken with skin removed
1/2 c. sweet rice
10 cloves of garlic
6 jujubes
1 knob of ginger
ginseng (optional)
6 chestnuts (optional)

Procedure:

• Remove as much of the skin and fat from the chicken as possible ( I neglected to do this the first time I made it and it was a greasy mess--very unappetizing) and rinse out the inside of the chicken to get rid of any smell.
• Put the sweet rice and 5 cloves of the garlic inside the cavity of the bird. Sew up the opening with needle and thread. Be careful not to sew it too tight because some water has to be able to get inside in order for the rice and garlic to cook (also learned this from trial and error; sewed it up too tight and the rice was uncooked when it was done)
• Put the chicken in a large pot along with all of the other ingredients (remaining garlic, ginger, jujubes, chestnuts and ginseng). Fill the pot with enough water to just cover the chicken.
• Boil for one hour or more. Season with salt and pepper and add some sliced green onions.
• Mah-nee deu-say-yo (Eat a lot!)