gop chang jeong gol

[larrylee]

I had a really great gop chang jeong gol in Gyeongju (not too chewy, and a bit of beef flavor). I received conflicting information on what gop chang is. I've seen it referenced as tripe and intestine, but it can't be both. I googled pictures of the four types of tripe and none of them match the tubular, ziti-like appearance of the gop chang.

Can someone answer this question in detail?

thanks,

Larry

[Soup]

I had a really great gop chang jeong gol in Gyeongju (not too chewy, and a bit of beef flavor). I received conflicting information on what gop chang is. I've seen it referenced as tripe and intestine, but it can't be both. I googled pictures of the four types of tripe and none of them match the tubular, ziti-like appearance of the gop chang.

Can someone answer this question in detail?

thanks,

Larry

←

I love gop chang (favorite form is in soup) but it seems no one serves it that way around where I live. They do have the jeong gol version, I like that too.

Gop Chang is small instestine (e.g., chitterlings). It is not tripe (althought this is also very good). Korean Tripe soup is excellent.

Now that I think about it it does look like ziti but they usually cut it so that it is not as long as ziti.

[ZenKimchi]

Gobchang -- one of my favorite foods

Intestines are your friends.

Monday was Teacher Appreciation Day. My girlfriend was in a good mood, and she knew that I had been begging to go out and enjoy grilled food on a mild spring evening. She asked, "What do you want to eat? We can go anywhere you want."

My evil mind started working. I was thinking of all the forbidden possibilities.

"Gobchang Gwi? Could we do that?"

"If you say so."

I've had gobchang a few different ways, including gobchang bokkeum (stir-fried with gochujang) and jangol (which is more like a stew). My favorite way is gobchang gwi -- grilled in a pan with onions, potatoes, and lots of nasty bits.

It is the ultimate man food.

My girlfriend -- I'll remind you she is Korean -- was hesitant when she ate it. She had never had them grilled before. But the next day she was craving more.

There's a great little restaurant in Ansan, south of Seoul, that grills them and flambees them with soju. They also serve raw liver and blanched tripe. The tripe is like eating condoms. But the raw liver is a major rite of passage for any serious foodie.

The intestines in gobchang gwi are stuffed with something like tofu and big cloves of garlic.

I used to live in the Sillim neighborhood of Seoul, which is known as the sundae and gobchang capital of Korea. They have these humongous restaurants serving up sloppy gobchang bokkeum where businessmen knock back sojus and wear pink aprons to protect their suits.

Ack... gotta go back to work now. I did a bit about it on my web site with video.

Gobchang Kui -- The Beauty of Grilled Intestines

Edited May 19, 2006 by ZenKimchi (log)

[larrylee]

Soup and ZenKimchee,

Thanks for clearing up the matter. Small intestines it is.

ZenKimchi: Unfortunately, that link to your writeup with video returned a server error. I haven't had raw liver yet, but gop chang grilled and flambeed with soju sounds awesome. What's that dish called in Korean?

LOL on the "tripe is like condoms" comment. It's certainly an acquired taste if you haven't grown up with it. I didn't, but I've been coming around slowly.

The only place I've had gop chang at in New York is Shilla, in Manhattan K-town. I picked their gop chang jigae on a whim and it also has tripe. The dish as a whole lacked the sort of depth as the version I had in Korea. The tripe, however, was mercifully cut small enough to eat without being too chewy.

[ZenKimchi]

Sorry, I was fooling around the the security settings on my site, and it shut the whole site down.

DOH!

It's back up now. The grilled intestines is Gobchqang Gwi 곱창 귀. I would be floored to find out if you see it in America. It would restore hope in me.

[chefzadi]

Gobchqang Gwi has been available in Los Angeles for at least 2 decades or more according to my wife. And there is probably a restaurant in Koreatown that serves a similar version to what you had.

There has been lots of back and forth between Koreans in Seoul and in Los Angeles.

[larrylee]

My wife says that Kang Shu Restaurant on 32nd St in Manhattan has gop chang gui. Now I'll have to go try it, but I wonder how good it will be?

[Pan]

That would be Kang Suh. I'm correcting the spelling just in case you might otherwise have trouble finding the place, which many people for some reason seem to have trouble finding. In my experience, Kang Suh is a very good restaurant.

[larrylee]

That would be Kang Suh. I'm correcting the spelling just in case you might otherwise have trouble finding the place, which many people for some reason seem to have trouble finding. In my experience, Kang Suh is a very good restaurant.

←

Thanks for pointing that out! I'm familiar with Kang Suh, but I thought "Kang Shu" was some other restaurant I hadn't heard about. She also says there are at least two other restaurants on the south side of 32nd that serve it. She doesn't have the names yet. One of them apparently has large, round metal tables. The other place is a second floor restaurant.

[Pan]

I'm guessing that the second floor restaurant is probably Seoul Garden, which is another very good restaurant.

[larrylee]

I realize I'm sort of veering off topic, but since I started it in this forum...

So the two other places we thought would have gop chang here in Manhattan's K-town sadly did not have it. However, Kang Suh did. Or rather, they were serving gop chang jeong gol and gop chang jigae. My wife asked someone who looked like a manager if they would serve us gop chang gui and he called the kitchen, which agreed. No one told the wait staff upstairs so they were a bit puzzled, but it was all worked out in the end. No flambeing in soju but it was still quite delicious.

Unfortunately, Kang Suh has switched from charcoal to gas! The upstairs tenants apparently complained. What a disappointment in the grand scheme of things.

We were also told that the... filling inside the gop chang was essentially the cow's last meal. Anyone know if that's true? The dish was not cheap - $21.99 per person. And then there was a bit of a zen moment when I was contemplating my stomach, full of intestine... well, anyway.

Oh, final note - Kang Suh had a small sign up indicating they were serving "non-smelly soon dae jigae." Kind of defeats the point if you ask me...

[ZenKimchi]

Yeah, that's funny. Last time I had it, my girlfriend laughed when I said, "Your intestines full of intestines now?"

I don't think the filling is the cow's last meal. Chitlins are washed and washed and washed before cooking. I think the filling I see in my gobchang is the substance they make tofu from before it gets formed and pressed.

I'm really glad you liked it. That price was very steep, too. But gobchang gwi is one of the moderately pricier dishes that I go out for. It's around $10 to $12 a person in my area.

[Soup]

Gop Chang is a funny thing. I always thought it was poor man's food however, I've never found it to be that inexpensive (unless you get the whole tub and you end up cleaning it yourself. I don't do this anymore. It is a huge pain). However, when I do buy the prepapred stuff in the korean grocery or order it at the restuarant, it isn't very cheap. It is actually very expensive where I live. (much like soondae, it currently runs $6.95 per pound at lotte where I live)

Not to go too far off topic but any of you have ever tried Tong Gol (spinal cord:cow)? I've not had it outside korea. I've looked in NY and DC but not in LA. It's been a long time but it really good.

Soup

[Jinmyo]

Very fun video Zkimchi.

[larrylee]

ZenKimchi: I noticed that the filling in the intestine was mildly bitter but I haven't really been able to get a straight answer on what it is. I think the cost of gop chang comes in the effort to prepare it. It sounds like Soup knows the story. Apparently, the preparation is very labor intensive. The gop chang comes surrounded in a lot of fat that has to be cut away.

Soup: I haven't had tong gol. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is Mad Cow... have you had it? What's it like?

A detail I missed about the gop chang gui - since it is grilled, the gop chang develops a nice char that really enhances the flavor and texture. This particular dish also had some honeycomb tripe that was cut into rectangular strips resembling the gop chang. Eating that with pa muchim made me almost made me forget that I wanted to have a bowl of rice.

Googling Korean food names is a bit hit-and-miss. I wish there was a standard romanization for Korean. A search on wikipedia reveals this page but it's way too involved for me to read right now. While riding the Seoul subway I noticed that the station I would have written as "Samsung" is spelled "Samseong," which corresponds to the Wikipedia page.

[ZenKimchi]

I think the romanization was changed in 2000 to make it easier to type Korean words on computer keyboards. There were changes made to make it a little easier and more standardized. Some major names and words are changing, such as Pusan (now Busan) and kalbi (now galbi).

But some things are staying the same, such as the family name Kim (which would be Gim).

[chefzadi]

Didn't bother to check the wholesale prices for gop chang. But it's even available at an all you can eat Korean buffet that has grills at the table. It can't be that expensive.

Restaurants can buy the stuff already cleaned.