Yukgaejang (Spicy Beef Soup)

Yukgaejang is beef simmered until tender, torn into thick shreds along the grain, seasoned with garlic, chili flakes, sesame oil and soy sauce and returned to the pot with long pieces of green onion. It is one of the traditional dishes of boknal, the hottest days of summer. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains the reasoning as iyeol-chiyeol — answering heat with heat, eating something hot enough to make you sweat — and adds that well-simmered meat is easy to digest while the spice wakes up a heat-dulled appetite.

The soup is a beef stand-in for gaejang-guk, the dog-meat soup that late-eighteenth-century almanacs such as Gyeongdo japji and Dongguk sesigi record as the boknal food of Seoul: dog meat and green onion simmered together, sprinkled with chili and eaten with rice to work up a sweat. Both encyclopedias describe yukgaejang as the version made for people who did not care for dog meat, and its name, "meat gaejang," preserves the link.

Though it began as a Seoul dish, the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture notes it became especially popular in sweltering Daegu, and Choe Nam-seon listed Daegu's yukgaejang among regional specialties. Beyond summer, it is a soup for large gatherings — feasts and, especially, funerals, where a big pot feeds many mourners.

• Lean beef makes it a protein-rich soup; by USDA figures a serving's beef supplies over half the daily vitamin B12 and a good share of zinc, plus some iron.
• Bracken, bean sprouts and green onion add fiber and vegetables to the bowl.
• Its role as a summer restorative rests on the traditional idea of fighting heat with heat; the spice and warm broth are a pleasure rather than a proven remedy.

• Seoul: beef shredded into thick strands, with green onion as the main vegetable.
• Daegu (daegu-tang): chunks of beef cooked until they fall apart rather than shredded, with very large amounts of green onion, garlic chives and garlic for a sweetness under the heat.
• Jeju: a pork-based version thick with Jeju bracken, sometimes called gosari-guk.
• Dakgaejang: made with chicken instead of beef; the folk encyclopedia relates it to a young-chicken soup in the nineteenth-century Siuijeonseo.
• Vegetables: depending on the region, mung bean sprouts, garlic chives, taro stems and bracken are added generously.