Sinseollo (Royal Hot Pot)

Sinseollo is named after its vessel, not its contents. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that the royal kitchen called the dish yeolgujatang, a name usually glossed as a soup that pleases the mouth, while a number of Joseon-era writings, including the Gyuhap chongseo, the Siui jeonseo, the Haedong jukji and the Dongguk sesigi, simply use the pot's name. Over time the pot's name came to stand for the whole dish. The first part of the word means a mountain immortal and the second a brazier, a pairing that fits the dish's ceremonial air.

The same encyclopedia entry preserves a legend about the pot. According to the cookbook Joseon yorihak, a Joseon scholar named Jeong Hui-ryang, who lived under King Yeonsan, foresaw a purge, withdrew from public life and wandered as a hermit. He is said to have designed a brazier on the pattern of the hexagram for water over fire, cooking vegetables in it as he traveled; after he vanished, people began calling the brazier a sinseollo, a brazier of the immortals. It is a story rather than a documented history.

The documented court version was lavish. The royal banquet record Jinyeon uigwe lists about twenty-five ingredients, among them beef, offal, pork, pheasant, chicken, abalone, sea cucumber, mullet, eggs, mushrooms, watercress, radish, pine nuts, ginkgo nuts and walnuts. Because the ingredients were costly and the preparation laborious, the dish counted among the finest offerings for formal banquets and drinking tables. A report in the Korea Times notes that yeolgujatang also opened the menu of a 1905 luncheon given by King Gojong for Alice Roosevelt, a menu based on the 1902 banquet record. For more on the setting, see royal court cuisine and royal banquets.

• Many ingredients, one bowl: a classic example of the Korean habit of building a dish from several colors at once, with beef and egg for protein and a mix of radish, carrot, zucchini and mushroom for vegetables.
• Eaten slowly: because diners pick out one piece at a time from a shared pot, the dish is paced by the table rather than by the plate.
• Broth-based: the nutrition estimate above suggests a moderate calorie count per portion, but this depends heavily on how much meat and fried egg go in.

• Court yeolgujatang: the banquet-record version with some two dozen ingredients, including pheasant, abalone, sea cucumber and organ meats, each cut to fit the pot and arranged by color.
• The Ongheui japji version: another recipe described in the encyclopedia mixes fried fish fillets, shredded meats and dried shellfish with seasonings such as pepper and jujube.
• Restaurant and home versions: the Korea Tourism Organization describes the modern dish simply as meat, fish, offal, dumplings, seafood and vegetables cooked in a pot over charcoal at the table, a looser formula than the court list. The home recipe below follows that looser spirit with beef, eggs, mushrooms and common vegetables.