Like many Korean dishes, the ingredients in gamja-t’ang taste better than they sound. Gamja means potato, and indeed there are potatoes in gamja-t’ang, but the other ingredients are what make it so tasty. Green onions, cabbage and/or kimchi, hot peppers and ground wild sesame seeds are boiled at a high temperature along with the main ingredient: pork vertebrae/spine. The high boiling temp allows the meat, cartilage, and tendons to become tender to the point of nearly falling off the bone. That said, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pick all the meat out of the nooks and crannies of the vertebrae. Your chopstick skills will need to be keen to get every morsel. The meat that does fall off the bone becomes part of the soup base, which is spicy, but not as spicy as many Korean stews. If you can get over the fact that you’re eating spine, it’s one of the tastiest Korean stews available in Hawai‘i.
In Korea, I seem to remember gamja-t’ang being a post night-out 2am stew. Perhaps one needs to have been drinking all night to enjoy vertebrae. Either way, it’s a tasty treat that, as far as I know, is only available at the Frog House restaurant on Kalakaua. Last night omma and I did take out with an extra kimchi jun.
gamja-t'ang
kimchi jun
mahalo frog house
panchan
vertabrae
one scoop kimchi 