I remember reading a long time ago that the feeling of revulsion when you look at shit (in the literal sense) is an evolutionary trait. Being revolted at crap is evolutionally successful as it prevents you from going near it and getting all kinds of ill. And it is successful, people don’t eat shit.
However, that feeling of revuslion can extend beyond crap to different foods depending on where you are from. In any country there are the ‘strange’ dishes which foreigners go “yuk – how can you eat that?!” about. Back in the UK it is black pudding (blood) and haggis (sheep’s heart, liver lungs). Here in Asia it is internal organs. For a Westerner there is something a touch frightening about them which is akin to that sense of revulsion when faced with crap.
However, I’m a good expat now, I eat all kinds of strange stuff and am currently trying to find a place to eat raw fresh spine juice from a cow in Korea (which is a rare and hard to find delicacy so let me know if you know of a place). So when Bridge paperzine* offered to take Jen and I for gopchang I wasn’t at all worried.
So what is gopchang (곱창)? It is the small intestine of the cow. However, from our experience at the restaurant it wasn’t the gopchang which was the problem. The gopchang was actually damn tasty and easy to munch on. It crisps in a pan with vegetables for 15 minutes or so and then you eat it in small cuts like an amputated little finger. The stuff inside the small intestine – or gop 곱 – is the solidified cow faecal matter and ends up as slightly chewy and sweet when cooked. As soon as our next guest visits I am off to take them to a gopchang restaurant. So no problems with the evolutionary trait there.
Instead it was what I would describe as the ‘tapas’ which comes before the gopchang which was the problem. The easiest was the raw cow’s heart which you lightly cook in the same pan as the gopchang. That was easy, that was delicious.
The other two ‘tapas’ were raw cow stomach and raw liver (stomach on the left and liver on the right two pictures above). For some reason the texture, the sheen, the wobble of the liver broke me. I could barely bring myself to eat it. Even after trying it – and loving it – I still had to confront myself each and everytime I had more.
As you can see from the picture above it is not just us who loved it. I have no idea who the people in the picture are. They just demanded I take a picture of them and then conspired to all shut their eyes at the same time. Ah soju.
- Price – KRW 20 to 30,000 for four
- Address – Sinchon, Seoul < I left the business card at home so will have to do it properly later
LOL you can eat faecal matter (though hidden in intestines) and liver broke you? man up! well, I can say that because being of Asian heritage, when we were growing up, my dad used to feed us boiled (yep, just plain boiled in water) liver and gizzards as a snack. I never got no pop tart. but i wouldn’t have it any other way!
I had pop tarts and I envy you. I still think my tongue hasn’t recovered from some of the burns those evil tarts caused! But hte raw liver… it killed me.
“The stuff inside the small intestine – or gop 곱 – is the solidified cow faecal matter and ends up as slightly chewy and sweet when cooked.”
HAHAHAHA this will phase me for the next day but I will get my beef offal on a stick off the streets regardless.
Man – consider the stuff you eat off the streets in China… I remember a friend telling me that there had been a bust of fish farmers as they were using contraceptive pills instead of fish food as due to the one child policy there was a massive subsidy for them.
Above and beyond the call of duty!
SO, to echo @Catty, you ate the faecal matter but wobbled at the liver? Surely the first was the hardest, I guess it wasn’t raw, but still… Whatever, much respect for chowing down on those particular ‘delicacies’. I’m eager to try some
“The stuff inside the small intestine – or gop 곱 – is the solidified cow faecal matter and ends up as slightly chewy and sweet when cooked.”
The ‘gop’ refers to the mucus within the small intestine and NOT the fecal matter. The small intestine is washed off of debris except for the gop prior to cooking. If this were not done, the gop would smell and that’s why it is rubbed with flour and salt prior to cooking.
Thanks for the clarification.