Chicken (dak)

Dak is the domestic chicken, descended from wild junglefowl of India and Southeast Asia. In Korea it enters history early: the Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa tell how a Silla king heard a white rooster crowing beneath a golden chest in a forest, found a baby boy inside, and named the forest Gyerim ("chicken forest"), a name later used for the kingdom itself. Chinese chronicles mention long-tailed chickens among the Han peoples of the southern peninsula, and the 16th-century Chinese pharmacopeia Bencao gangmu praised Joseon's long-tailed chickens as the tastiest and richest of all. Those old native breeds have largely disappeared, replaced by imported egg and meat breeds.

According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, chicken became the most eaten meat after beef and pork, and Koreans cook it as plain boiled baeksuk, braises, grilled dishes and even raw, along with the gizzards, liver and feet. The Dongui bogam assigned different medicinal virtues to red, white and black roosters and to the black-boned ogolgye, and chicken was a fixture of folk remedies. The best-known chicken soup, samgyetang, grew out of yeongye-baeksuk, a young hen simmered with glutinous rice, chestnuts, jujubes and garlic. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture notes that classic Joseon cookbooks record young-chicken soups and braises but no ginseng chicken soup; it describes the dish spreading in the 20th century as a summer alternative to dog-meat soup, first as gyesamtang ("chicken-ginseng soup") and then renamed with ginseng first as the root grew popular and prized abroad.

Modern chicken dishes are younger still. Dakgalbi began in Chuncheon in the late 1960s, when a tavern owner marinated chicken like pork ribs and grilled it over charcoal; by the 1970s cheap "college student galbi" restaurants had clustered downtown, and the dish evolved into chicken stir-fried on an iron griddle with gochujang sauce, cabbage, sweet potato and rice cakes. Rotisserie chicken was the rage in 1960s Seoul, imported pressure fryers spread "American-style" fried chicken in the 1970s, and the sweet-spicy glazed yangnyeom chicken of the mid-1980s turned fried chicken into a Korean dish in its own right. Braised andong-jjimdak and spicy dak-bokkeumtang are other home and restaurant staples.

• Lean protein: Skinless chicken supplies about 21 g of protein per 100 g with about 3 g of fat, plus niacin, vitamin B6 and selenium.
• Traditional beliefs: Korean medicine long treated chicken, and especially chicken with ginseng, as restorative food for hot summer days; these are cultural traditions rather than proven health effects.
• Cook poultry thoroughly: The FDA lists 165°F (74°C) for all poultry, whole, in parts, ground or stuffed. Color and texture are unreliable, so use a thermometer, especially for whole birds like samgyetang where the stuffing must also reach temperature.
• Keep raw chicken separate: The FDA advises separate cutting boards for raw meat and poultry and never returning cooked food to a plate that held raw poultry.
• Watch the coating and sauce: Fried and glazed chicken adds oil, sugar and salt that plain boiled or braised chicken does not.