Gopchang Jeongol (Beef Intestine Hot Pot)

Gopchang-jeongol joins two things: gopchang, the small intestine of cattle (or pigs), and jeongol, a hot pot arranged in a wide pan and cooked at the table. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture notes that the word gopchang is now usually read as "intestine with gop" — gop being fat, here the rich, creamy fat and digestive juices inside the beef intestine — though a 1936 newspaper glossary explained it as "curved intestine." Beef intestine has a long place in Korean cooking: the 1809 household manual Gyuhap chongseo stuffs it with minced beef, pheasant and chicken and steams it, much like today's sundae, and court and upper-class cooks used offal widely with ginger, garlic, pepper and chopi to mask its smell.

Jeongol has its own history. Both the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture and the folk encyclopedia cite the eighteenth-century Gyeongdo japji, which describes a pan shaped like a soldier's felt hat, with vegetables blanched in the hollow center and meat grilled on the flat brim; only around the turn of the twentieth century, they suggest, did the grill-pan become the broth-filled pot cooked at the table that diners know now. The folk encyclopedia lists gopchang-jeongol among the established kinds of jeongol. Exactly when the intestine hot pot first appeared is not documented.

Its modern popularity follows the meat trade. The folk encyclopedia explains that before refrigeration offal spoiled fast and was mostly a fall and winter food, believed to help the body withstand cold. When large slaughterhouses opened at Majang-dong and Doksan-dong in Seoul in the 1960s and 1970s, cheap fresh by-products became available daily, and gopchang alleys grew up nearby — at Garibong-dong for factory workers of the Guro industrial complex, and at Hwanghak-dong and Wangsimni, which survive today. For decades it was food for laborers and students who could not afford beef; now it is simply a favorite.

• A high-protein dish by the MFDS analysis, and a source of selenium and zinc.
• Using intestine and tripe makes use of the whole animal; the folk encyclopedia notes that offal is nutritionally comparable to meat at a lower price.
• Mushrooms, cabbage, onion and crown daisy bring vegetables to an otherwise rich pot.

• Seoul (Hwanghak-dong and Wangsimni): the folk encyclopedia names these as Seoul's surviving gopchang alleys; the earliest shops there specialized in gopchang stir-fried with vegetables, then grilled gopchang from the 1980s.
• Daegu and Yesan: the folk encyclopedia also points to well-known gopchang streets in Daegu and Yesan in South Chungcheong.
• Naejang-jeongol: the folk encyclopedia lists a mixed-offal hot pot alongside gopchang-jeongol; in Korean usage the large intestine is daechang, distinct from the small-intestine gopchang.
• Pork version: cheaper pork intestine, which the folk encyclopedia notes is thinner and is turned inside out and washed before cooking, unlike beef intestine.