hankyoreh

A tasting event for osam bulgogi

A new food alley for spicy marinated squid and pork belly will be developed near Alpensia Resort, the main venue for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang County.

The county held a tasting event for the dish - known locally as osam bulgogi - on the afternoon of Apr. 24 in the village of Hoenggye in Daegwallyeong Township. For the event, the county presented five items developed with local farming and specialty ingredients, including a new form of osam bulgogi, osam jjageuli (squid and pork belly stew), odari twigim (fried squid legs), odari kongnamul jjim (steamed squid legs and bean sprouts), and ojingeo chogyetang (chilled squid soup). The new osam bulgogi brings a distinctive pork flavor to the traditional variety thanks to the addition of deodeok root extract to the sauce. Another of the new items, the odari twigim, offers a solution to the vexing question of what to do with the legs left over when the squid’s body has been used to make osam bulgogi.

The tasting was part of the county’s project to develop an “osam bulgogi street” in Hoenggye. At a cost of 1.6 billion won (US$1.4 million), Pyeongchang County is currently planning to build the street at the entrance to Alpensia Resort in Hoenggye by July for local and foreign tourists visiting the region for the Olympics. Roughly a dozen local restaurants currently sell osam bulgogi in Hoenggye. The county plans to provide recipes and other support to merchants on the new street who adopt osam bulgogi as their main dish.

The county also plans to put up signboards, mobile street stands, and wall paintings on the Hoenggye osam bulgogi street and provide around 20 million won (US$17,600) in restaurant upgrade costs to places selling osam bulgogi.

Hoenggye osam bulgogi is a dish made by mixing chunks of squid and pork belly with various spices and adding vegetables and mushrooms before cooking on a hot grilling plate. Residents of Hoenggye - which enjoys easy access to fresh squid thanks to its proximity to Gangneung - have long added squid when they grill samgyeopsal, a popular pork belly dish. The combination of chewy, grease-free squid with the spicy and fatty flavor of pork belly and red pepper sauce makes the dish ideal to eat with rice or as a side dish with drinks.

“It’s been over 50 years since the region began selling osam bulgogi,” noted Jeong Hae-dong, the supervising official with the Pyeongchang County Office’s economy and sports division.

“We plan to develop osam bulgogi into a signature dish so that when local and foreign tourists come to Pyeongchang ahead of the Olympics, they think, ‘Pyeongchang Olympics means osam bulgogi,’” Jeong said.

By Park Soo-hyuk, Gangwon correspondent

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