Sundae (Korean Blood Sausage)

Sundae is Korea's sausage: pork intestine filled with blood, vegetables, meat, tofu and glutinous rice, tied at both ends and boiled or steamed. The folk encyclopedia's entry, by food scientist Son Jeong-woo, notes it was made mainly in Hamgyeong, Pyeongan and Jeju and has since spread everywhere. It was once a by-product of slaughtering a pig for a holiday or family event; today small factories turn it out with more glass noodles than rice or vegetables, and it is sold as a meal, a snack and street food. Both encyclopedias point to Chinese precedents: the agricultural treatise Qimin yaoshu describes lamb's blood and meat packed into lamb intestine and boiled.

Korean recipes appear from the late 1600s. The folk encyclopedia cites Jubangmun, in which cleaned beef intestine is filled with blood, flour, water and hot seasoning, boiled and sliced; Jeungbo sallim gyeongje, which steams beef intestine stuffed with seasoned beef and slices it into horseshoe shapes to dip in vinegared chili paste; and Gyuhap chongseo, which uses minced beef, chicken and pheasant. These Joseon versions relied on beef intestine and meat. The word sundae first appears in the late-19th-century Siuijeonseo, whose dwaeji-sundae — pig intestine stuffed with blanched mung bean sprouts, water dropwort, radish, chopped napa kimchi, tofu, seasonings and pig's blood — is close to today's. The same book gives eogyo-sundae, made in a croaker's swim bladder, and 20th-century cookbooks of 1924 and 1948 add a pork-intestine soup recommended with drink, the ancestor of sundaeguk.

Either the large or small intestine can serve as casing; the folk encyclopedia notes northerners prefer the fatter, thicker large intestine. The casing is cleaned by rubbing with flour and coarse salt and turned inside out, then stuffed and steamed or boiled for about 30 minutes. Cooled sundae is sliced about 2 cm thick and dipped in salt mixed with chili powder or in salted-shrimp brine. Today it is also stir-fried on griddles, deep-fried or made into jeon, and is a fixture of market stalls. See Korean street food and traditional markets.

• Iron: blood is exceptionally rich in iron; the database's high-blood sundae supplies around 14 mg per 150 g serving, most of it heme iron. The folk encyclopedia also notes the iron content.
• A whole meal in a casing: grain, vegetables, tofu and blood together provide protein, starch and some fiber.
• Nose-to-tail eating: sundae makes use of blood and casings that would otherwise go to waste.

• Abai sundae (Sokcho, from Hamgyeong): Hamgyeong sundae used pig's head meat, lung, spleen, dried radish greens, sprouts, glutinous rice, blood and dorae oil rendered from pork fat. After the Korean War, Hamgyeong refugees settled in Sokcho — the Cheongho-dong district became known as Abai Village, abai meaning father or elder in their dialect — and their large-intestine sausage, packed with steamed glutinous rice, dried radish greens, napa cabbage, sprouts and blood, became abai sundae. Thick-cut and generous, it is now served in Sokcho with spicy pollack salad. See Sokcho and the northern provinces.
• Ojingeo-sundae (Gangwon coast): a whole squid body stuffed with its chopped tentacles, carrot, onion, chives, sprouts, tofu and glutinous rice or glass noodles, steamed about 15 minutes and sliced; sometimes dipped in flour and egg and pan-fried like jeon. Dried squid rolled around a seasoned flour paste is made in Gyeonggi as well. See Gangwon.
• Dongtae-sundae (Hamgyeong): a whole salted pollack, gutted through the mouth, stuffed, sewn shut and frozen, then steamed a portion at a time and eaten with vinegared chili paste.
• Gyeonggi and Chungcheong: Yongin's Baegam sundae uses glutinous rice, glass noodles and plenty of tofu, sprouts and cabbage, seasoned with salted shrimp; Cheonan's Byeongcheon sundae, made in a cluster of shops since the 1960s, is soft with blood, glass noodles and cabbage. See Chungcheong.
• Pyeongan and Jeju: Pyeongan sundae is rich in millet flour, tofu and sprouts; Jeju's sue or dot-sue uses barley and buckwheat flour, often with chives. See Jeju.