Tteokgalbi (Minced Short-Rib Patties)

Tteokgalbi is told as a court dish made friendly. The usual story is that ribs were awkward for a king to gnaw, so palace cooks stripped the meat, chopped and seasoned it, and pressed it back onto the bone. Whether or not that happened, the idea is easy to see in the dish: meat cut so finely that anyone, young or old, can eat it without struggling. A Joseon-era name for the preparation is said to have been hyo-galbi ("filial ribs") or no-galbi ("elders' ribs"), from the habit of chopping meat small for aging parents. A 2009 newspaper survey of long-established restaurants reports that the word tteokgalbi itself is more recent: one Damyang restaurant's owner dates the name to around the early 1970s, while a Dongducheon restaurant's owner says it was already in use in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

The name has several explanations. The Digital Gwangju Culture Encyclopedia lists three: the meat is pounded for a long time like tteok (rice cake), the patty looks like tteok, or the squared shape resembles injeolmi. The meat is beaten and kneaded until it holds together, so the first explanation is easy to believe.

Three places claim the dish. In Damyang, South Jeolla, tradition holds that the diplomat Song Hui-gyeong brought a palace recipe with him when he retired there in the early fifteenth century; this is a local tradition rather than a documented history. In Gyeonggi, the Gwangju encyclopedia says, the dish is traced to court ladies who left the palace in 1911 and sold palace-style food to earn a living. Songjeong in Gwangju has the best-documented story. In the 1950s Choe Cheo-ja, who ran a small eatery near the Songjeong five-day market, made a minced, wide, thin patty for in-laws with poor teeth, using inexpensive beef from the nearby cattle market. After about forty years of her cooking, former staff opened their own restaurants nearby; in 2004 the district designated the cluster Songjeong Tteokgalbi Street. For the wider tradition of grilled meat, see Korean BBQ culture.

• Complete protein: beef and pork supply high-quality protein; the estimate above puts a two-patty serving at roughly 23 g.
• Zinc and vitamin B12: USDA lists 80/20 ground beef at about 4.2 mg zinc and 2.1 µg vitamin B12 per 100 g, so the beef here is a meaningful source of both.
• Easy to eat: the fine mince and soft texture suit children and older adults, which is the dish's oldest rationale.

• Damyang: all-beef, from the ribs of Korean cattle. The meat is cut from the bone, finely minced, shaped into a thick square, pressed back onto the rib bone and marinated in a soy-sesame-pepper-scallion-garlic-onion seasoning; some cooks add pear or apple juice or mirin. It was once grilled over a brazier and today is grilled over oak or bamboo charcoal.
• Gyeonggi: flat and square, like steamed rice cake (siru-tteok) in shape, according to the Gwangju encyclopedia's comparison.
• Songjeong, Gwangju: boneless, flat and square, about 0.6 cm thick in the encyclopedia's recipe. It started as beef; during the late-1990s financial crisis restaurants began mixing in pork to keep prices steady, and the result was judged more tender and flavorful. It is usually served as two pieces with a bowl of pork-bone broth.
• Other meats: a Seoul restaurant in the 2009 survey makes it entirely from pork, and a Jeonju restaurant blends Korean and imported beef, though a Damyang owner says mixing in imported beef changes the aroma and puts customers off.