Naju Gomtang (Naju Clear Beef Soup)

Gomtang comes from goeum, a Joseon word for meat or fish boiled down into a concentrated broth. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture traces goeum to the 1795 royal procession records of King Jeongjo, where such broths accompanied thin rice gruels for Lady Hyegyeong, and to the late-nineteenth-century Siuijeonseo, which simmers leg bones, shank, knee, tail, tripe, abalone and sea cucumber in a great cauldron for a thick, white soup. By the end of the 1800s, gomtang had come to mean beef soup served over rice in market eateries.

Naju's version is a market food of the early twentieth century. The Federation of Korean Cultural Centers' regional-culture series describes soup made about a century ago from ox heads and innards and sold over rice at Naju's five-day market, which gathered near Geumseonggwan, the old guesthouse of the Naju magistracy. The oldest surviving restaurant, Hayanjip, traces itself to a market eatery opened in 1910 that first sold bean-sprout and dried-greens soups; gomtang was added around 1940, and the shop became a gomtang specialist in 1960.

The same account links the dish's rise to a Japanese cannery, Takenaka's Naju branch factory, which began operating in 1937 and produced canned beef for the military. With 300 to 400 cattle reportedly slaughtered a day near Geumseonggwan by 1940, the heads, bones and offal left over from the canned meat passed to market cooks and went into the soup pot. Today a gomtang street opposite Geumseonggwan is one of Naju's best-known attractions, and the soup is counted among the city's three signature foods alongside fermented skate and grilled eel.

• By the MFDS analysis, a bowl is a lean, high-protein soup and a good source of selenium, zinc and vitamin B12.
• A meat-based broth that is skimmed of fat is lighter than bone-heavy soups, while still filling with rice.
• The broth is traditionally left lightly seasoned so that each diner can salt it to taste.

• Naju style: known for a clear broth built mainly on meat — brisket, shank and fine intestine (gonjasoni) — rather than the milky bone stock of seolleongtang. Sources disagree on bones: one account says Naju cooks use none at all, while Hayanjip describes layering beef leg bones under brisket, tongue, shank, neck and tail and skimming constantly to keep the broth clear.
• Toryeom: rice in the bowl is warmed by pouring hot broth over it and draining it back several times before the bowl is filled.
• Seoul gomtang and seolleongtang: the folk encyclopedia describes Seoul's late-Joseon soups built on ox head, bones, hide and feet; for the milky bone version, see seolleongtang.