Samjigook

Date: 3/13/2011

After the teacher's walk, we all piled back into the cars and headed out to dinner.  The day before I had been offered an option between Bean Sprout Soup and Samjigook.  I have had Bean Sprout Soup so I went with the dish that I had not tried before.  To me, that makes perfect sense.  Mrs Kang was trying to explain that Samjigook had something to do with blood...but I just thought that she was using the wrong word, or I wasn't understanding, or something, or heck, even if it was to do with blood I can always just politely eat a lot of kimchi...

So, here is what Samjigook looks like:

Not too bad.  Looks kinda like Kimchi Jige (Kimchi Soup).  Jige and Gook are both words for soup.  Gook's are more broth like while Jige's are thicker.

Mrs Park was sitting and eating with us and so I asked her to explain to me what Samjigook was.  She had pulled this incredulous face when I had samjigook placed in front of me.

Samjigook is a soup made from Cow's Blood.  They take the blood and freeze it, or store it, or let it sit for a while and eventually it congeals into this block of .... something (blood?).  It kinda looks like what I imagine liver or a kidney would look like.  And then they kinda chunk the big block of congealed blood up into little-r pieces and put it in the soup as the "meat product."

Samjigook is usually eaten by men after a heavy night of drinking.  It is believed that the blood has a lot of healthy things in it that will help the body heal itself after one over-indulges.

The soup--on a whole--isn't actually that bad.  Admittedly, I shied away from the blood (I mean, it just is a little too gross and my brain was rebelling against the idea).   But the broth was delicious and I really liked the veggies.  It wasn't too spicy (granted, my spice tolerance has sky-rocketed in Korea).  But I would actually get samjigook again--and probably not eat the blood, but enjoy the other parts of the soup.

Plus, I scored major brownie points from my co-teachers at school.  They couldn't believe their foreign teacher was eating Samjigook.  I sometimes feel that the Korean teachers get together with other schools and talk about their foreigners...and I hope that my school brags about me.  I brag about my school and co-teachers.

The entire incident reminds me of a golden rule of Eating Strange Foods.  It's called: "Don't ask."  I did a homestay in Japan when I was in 9th grade (high school) and the trick I learned was, "Chew: 1, 2, 3.  Swallow.  Drink some water.  And after 24 hours--ask what it was."   I kinda think this takes the fun out of eating at a foreign table, but it does make sure you don't get sick.