Chueotang (Loach Soup)

Chueotang is a soup of pond loach (mikkuraji, also chueo, "autumn fish"), a small fish of rice paddies and ditches. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture describes it as a long-simmered soup seasoned with doenjang and gochujang and counted among Korea's restorative foods (boyang eumsik). Once a seasonal treat — loaches are fattest from about July to November — it is now eaten year-round because the fish are farmed. Although the name ends in -tang, the MFDS food database files it with stews and hot pots, which is why it is grouped with jjigae here.

It was a dish of the farming calendar. After the autumn equinox, villagers drained their paddies and dug ditches around them, catching the fat loaches that had burrowed into the mud to overwinter; the folk encyclopedia describes the soup made from them being served at a village feast to thank the elders at the end of the farming year. Loaches appear in the twelfth-century Chinese envoy's account Gaoli tujing, and the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture finds the soup itself in Yi Gyu-gyeong's mid-nineteenth-century Oju yeonmun jangjeon sango as chudubu-tang: live loaches dropped into a pot with cold fresh tofu, burrowing into it as the water heated. Lee Yong-gi's 1924 cookbook, the folk encyclopedia adds, tried this and reported that the fish died in the hot water before they could burrow.

Cooks clean the slippery live fish by salting them under a lid, then rinsing them several times. The fish are either simmered and ground, or added whole, and every regional style relies on a pinch of chopi (Korean prickly ash, often called sancho) at the table to tame the muddy smell.

• Because the whole fish is ground into the soup, a bowl is an unusually good source of calcium, by the MFDS analysis, along with protein, selenium and vitamin B12.
• Dried radish greens and perilla seed bring fiber into the bowl.
• It is traditionally regarded as a restorative food; the Donguibogam describes the loach as warming and good for the stomach. That is a traditional view, not a proven effect; see yaksik-dongwon.

• Namwon (Jeolla) style: the Digital Namwon Culture Encyclopedia describes loaches cooked, ground whole and sieved, then simmered with blanched radish greens (mu-ugeoji), taro stems and sweet potato stems in a paste of perilla seed, red chili, doenjang and ginger; Namwon's Cheongeo-dong has a street of chueotang restaurants.
• Other Jeolla style: the folk encyclopedia describes rubbing the loaches with salt and pumpkin leaves to scour them before cooking, mashing them and thickening the soup with doenjang and perilla.
• Wonju (Gangwon) style: live loaches go into a boiling gochujang broth whole, with potatoes, mushrooms, taro stems, garlic chives, green onion and water dropwort; the folk encyclopedia calls it sharp and spicy yet refreshing.
• Seoul style (chutang): a broth of beef tripe or bones with tofu, mushrooms and squash, reddened with chili flakes, with whole boiled loaches added.
• Gyeongsang style: ground loaches with napa cabbage, bracken, taro stems and mung bean sprouts, finished with chilies and bangaip (Korean mint), with chopi at the table.