Raw Crab is One of the Greatest Dishes in All of Korean Cooking — K-Town

When I came here for the first time a few years back, and I enjoyed ganjang-gejang, it opened up a whole other universe of flavor that honestly, I think, propelled me toward a greater pursuit of amazing Korean food. So that's why I love this place. Raw crab, it's a specific breed that's flown in from Korea. And the way they get made is put into this incredibly complex, aromatic sauce. Eatin' well today. The piece de resistance, this amazing soy-marinated flower crab. They are using gokke. So gokke literally means, in Korean, flower crab. This soy-fermented crab is the absolute pinnacle of Korean cuisine expression. It's not this heavy, spicy, red marinade. Instead, you have a gentle soy marinade, and inside you have all these aromatics. You have onions, you have scallions, and you even have traditional Korean medicinal products like deer antlers and licorice root. The thing is really completed with the addition of mirin, which is a rice wine, and also some sake and soju. This thing, this liquid, just magically transforms the crab. You can tell this is a female crab because you can see the roe, the bright orange roe in there. But let me crack this open. It almost has this sheen of bone marrow, really, and almost the same texture as bone marrow. But this is cold. This is a completely cold dish. It's uncooked. Oh my God. That is just incredible. It is so rich and smooth, like almost like butter melting on your palate. It just coats your whole mouth. It has a sweetness to it that is indescribable. I can't, it's not sugary. It's not caramelly. It's got this, the sweetness that only crab can give you. I can't. Oh man. That gentle fermentation has congealed the meat into this like kind of uniform gelatin. It's countered by the brighter notes of the actual marinade. When it's raw, it's another thing completely. Like it's almost unrecognizable. If blue crab is regular Angus beef, like this is wagyu because it just melts away as you start eating it. Just like a great piece of wagyu beef. When you have it with rice, because of the soy, it takes on this almost like sushi-like quality, right? This actually reminds me a lot of raw scallop. When you have a raw scallop on top of sushi rice, you get that rich texture of the scallop contrasted with the warm rice. It's the same thing that's happening here, except you have an entire crab of it. You can keep getting that incredible combination. So what I'm gonna do is take some of the roe now, this bright orange roe, along with the, these are kind of the innards of the crab. Let's try that with some of the rice. I'm a little scared of this part. I don't love eating the middle of the crab, but maybe that's just because. Whoa. Man, that's totally different. The roe is, reminds me heavily of uni. That is like truly, truly special. You can see ganjang gejang. You can find it in Korea, definitely, but in the US, this is not a very common dish. It's a long process. These things have been aging for two days. So it is a hard dish to serve. You have to be known for it, you have to specialize in it, and that's what I love about Sobat. They have committed to preparing one of the greatest Korean dishes. Thank you so much for watching, and if you want to see more of K-Town in Los Angeles, click right here. I mean, how much? That was the first father and son trip. I had a very good upbringing, and I ate very well. Yeah, and I take full credit for that.