Making Yeot and Jocheong

Before sugar was common, Korean kitchens made their own sweetness from grain. Starch is cooked, broken down into sugar by malt, strained, and boiled down. Stop early and you have jocheong (조청), a runny amber syrup; keep going and it sets into yeot (엿), a hard taffy-like candy. Both rely on yeotgireum, malted barley. The modern factory cousin, made with industrial enzymes, is mulyeot.

An old sweetener

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that Goryeo records often mention confections of fried grain finished with honey or yeot, so yeot was probably in use before then, and it cites a reference to hard malt candy in the writings of Yi Gyu-bo. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture adds that the sixth-century Chinese agricultural manual Qimin yaoshu already describes making yeot with malt, and that Joseon writers such as Heo Gyun recorded white and dark yeot. Honey was scarce and costly, so jocheong, whose name means "made honey" (cheong being honey), stood in for it in rice cakes and sweets.

Step one: yeotgireum

Malt does the work. Yeotgireum is barley that has been sprouted and dried; despite the name, it has nothing to do with oil (gireum). The folk encyclopedia traces the word to gireuda, "to grow," like the old names for bean sprouts. Sprouting grain fills with amylase, the enzyme a seed uses to break down its own starch, and drying it at that moment preserves the enzyme.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes the home method. Soak hulled barley (bori) for a day, drain it into a steamer and cover with a damp cloth, sprinkling it with water as it dries. Rinse the tangled rootlets every couple of days. By the sixth day, when the shoots are slightly shorter than the grain, spread the barley out and dry it in a breezy place, rubbing it apart by hand so it does not heat up. Timing matters: shoots that grow too long leave less malt powder and less sweetness. The best malt is grown in late autumn, when it is cool. Ground to powder, the same yeotgireum makes sikhye.

Step two: saccharification

Next, starch becomes sugar. Cook rice (glutinous chapssal or ordinary ssal), mix it with malt water and keep it warm. The encyclopedia's jocheong entry describes setting the pot in a warm water bath or burying it to hold the heat, until the rice grains soften, break down and float. Other starches work: the encyclopedia mentions sorghum, corn and sweet potato, each with its own color and gloss but much the same sweetness. Rice gives a clear syrup; sorghum, a reddish, cloudier one.

Then the mixture goes into a cloth bag and is squeezed. The spent grain left behind is yeotbap; the sweet liquid is yeotmul.

Step three: boiling down

The rest is patience. The yeotmul is boiled in a large iron pot, uncovered, for hours. The folk encyclopedia suggests three to four hours to thicken it for jocheong, skimming the foam over very low heat because the syrup boils over and scorches easily. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture passes on an old trick: float an empty gourd dipper on the surface, because once the pot boils over, it is almost impossible to stop.

Cooks ladle off syrup at different stages for different uses. The thinnest jocheong, runny enough to pour, is for dipping tteok; a thicker one glazes the puffed bases of gangjeong (twigim and frying); a stiffer one, mixed with toasted sesame or pepper, is spooned straight from the jar. Today jocheong also adds sweetness and shine to braises and stir-fried banchan (jorim).

From syrup to yeot

Boil on until a skin forms and the syrup no longer flows, and it becomes yeot. Fully concentrated, it is dark brown gaeng-yeot. Both encyclopedias describe how hard yeot is softened and then pulled and folded over and over; air trapped inside turns it white, porous and brittle, and it was shaped into sticks or slabs as candy. The folk encyclopedia cites old recipe collections, including the Gyuhap chongseo, that make Gwangju white yeot by pulling the syrup over a post driven into the ground.

Regional yeot

Every region had its own. The encyclopedias list corn hwanggol-yeot in Gangwon, spoonable radish yeot in Chungcheong, sweet potato yeot in Jeolla, pumpkin yeot in Gyeongsang, and on Jeju, dak-yeot and kkwong-yeot, glutinous millet syrup boiled down with chicken or pheasant as a restorative. Yeot was essential for New Year sweets, so households made a winter supply. Grain syrups are still added sugars; see sugar in Korean food and hangwa.