Ginseng Chicken Soup For the Korean Soul — K-Town #loveasianfood

It's like a steamed facial. So we're about to eat one of the most iconic Korean dishes, and it's called samgyetang. They take a young chicken, stuff it with glutinous rice, and then they put in some other kind of medicinal-type ingredients, you know, either little pieces or a whole chunk of ginseng, garlic, and then they put in some Chinese dates or jujubes. While it's cooking, the whole chicken kind of boils in there and it tenderizes, and all the flavors of the chicken go into the broth. So I'm here in Chicago at a restaurant called Sial Ginseng Chicken. I'm really looking forward to getting what this dish promises, strength, stamina, nourishment, and energy. It came out of a summer tradition. In a largely agrarian society like Korea, farmers are working every day that the sun is out. That, the sun beating down on your body, it drains you. What they would do is they would collectively take three days out of the summer and be like, okay, on this day, we're gonna all eat this dish together. We're gonna eat something that's hot and salty and has a lot of nutrition, and it's gonna give us life again. And that tradition continues to this day. The tradition is called jjamppong. That focus on our health and what we eat and how it affects us is part of the reason why Koreans are generally pretty healthy. It's cool that this dish is just a really nice example, a supreme example of great Korean comfort food. Oh, it's falling apart. It's so tender. I'm gonna add just a little more salt. I like salt. You do need to season it a little bit. Ooh, that's good. That might be some of the purest chicken soup you could ever have. I like to dip it in the salt. Wow, I mean, this thing is meltingly tender. Here's a jujube, which is like a Chinese date and it's sort of dried, so it has a kind of prune-like flavor. Ah, here we go. This is what I was looking for. Whole garlic. It's just melted. It's almost, like, look at that. With almost no effort at all, this thing just melts away. So she gave us a little bit of insamju, or ginseng wine, and usually when you order this dish, get a little shot of it. So I'm gonna have some. Ooh, that's boozy. I mean, it's kind of like a really fiery soju. It's nice. It's a little medicinal, it's a little herbaceous, but it's not, you know, overpowering. I would say it's kind of like Korean malort, so it goes really well in Chicago. The ginseng, it's a medicinal root, and so what it's supposed to do is, I mean, there's a lot of things that it purportedly helps you with. I'm gonna just list off a couple of them, because I think they're hilarious. Fatigue and memory and stress and anxiety, and even things like flatulence, which, I mean, sure, that helps. It definitely feels medicinal. Like, I think there's a psychological effect to eating something like this, right? I mean, people have been saying that placebos are more powerful than actual drugs, because we tell our bodies that we're being healed, and I'm not saying that ginseng isn't. I think that ginseng has been shown in studies that it does have some actual medical benefits for eating weakness and exhaustion and loss of concentration, but more than anything, if you think that this is gonna restore you and give you your health and give you strength and stamina and vitality, then it's probably gonna do that, and I think a good bowl of chicken soup is always gonna do that. Thanks so much for watching, and if you wanna see more of K-Town, click right here.