Recipe: Korean Chicken Soup To Fix Everything From a Blocked Nose to a Broken Heart

There’s a reason almost every culture on earth has its own chicken soup. It’s delicious, restorative and genuinely proven to help when you’re under the weather – though you don’t need to be sick to justify a bowl.

Many of us have a go-to version, whether it’s Greek avgolemono or Thai tom kha khai. Korean chicken soup deserves a place in that line-up, and dak gomtang is one of the most approachable versions.

This one is from Sang, one of Sydney’s most-loved Korean restaurants. “Dak gomtang is much easier to make than other Korean chicken soups like samgyetang or baeksuk,” writes Kenny Yong-Soo Son in the restaurant’s self-titled cookbook debut.

The base ingredients are simple – you use a whole chicken, spring onion, garlic, water and salt. The chicken is shredded and served back into the bowl, topped with a punchy mix of garlic chives, sesame oil and gochugaru that dials up the heat and crunch. Serve it alongside rice and kimchi and consider it your new cold-weather staple.

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Dak gomtang by Sang

Serves 4
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (roughly 1.5kg)
2 spring onions, cut into 5cm lengths
5 garlic cloves
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
Ground black pepper, to season
Rice, to serve
Kimchi, to serve

Garlic chive topping
160g garlic chives, cut into 5cm lengths
2 tbsp gochugaru (Korean chilli powder)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1½ tsp coarse sea salt

Method

To make the garlic chive topping, put all the topping ingredients into a bowl and mix well. Set aside.

Wash the chicken thoroughly inside and out with cold running water, then slice off the tail part of the chicken. Peel off the skin.

Put the chicken into a large saucepan with 2L of water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, cook for 10 minutes. Remove the chicken and rinse it under cold water.

Put the chicken back into a large saucepan with 2L of fresh water over a high heat with the lid on. Cook for 1 hour. Every now and then, use a spoon to remove and discard any foam that forms on top. This will help achieve a clear, clean soup base.

Add the spring onion and garlic and cook for 20 minutes more.

Turn off the heat, remove the chicken and put it aside to rest. When it is cool enough to handle, tear the meat into bite-sized pieces.

Pour the broth through a fine-mesh sieve into a saucepan, discarding the solids. Bring the broth to the boil again, then season with the salt.

To serve, divide the shredded chicken between four bowls and add a quarter of the garlic chive topping to each bowl. Carefully pour the broth on top and season with black pepper. Best enjoyed with a bowl of hot rice and a side of kimchi.

Notes

When making the garlic chive topping, be sure to use a utensil that is at body temperature – this will help to soften the chives.

This is an edited extract from Sang: Recipes From a Korean Family Table by Kenny Yong-Soo Son. Photography by Jiwon Kim. Published by Hardie Grant Books (RRP $50).