Yeongye-jjim (Braised Stuffed Young Chicken)

History

Eumsik dimibang preserves one of the earliest written recipes for yeongye-jjim, a steam-braised young chicken. The name 연계 — later assimilated in speech to 영계 — derives from 軟鷄, literally "tender chicken," pointing to a small, soft-fleshed bird rather than strictly a "young" one, though the two readings overlap. Jang Gye-hyang's version is a jjim in the older sense: the cleaned bird is filled with perilla, scallion and chives bound in a seasoned wheat-flour batter, then cooked gently until tender. As throughout this c.1670 book — the oldest surviving Korean-language cookbook and the first authored by a woman in East Asia — there is no chili pepper; the seasoning is ginger, black pepper and cheoncho (Korean/Sichuan pepper). The dish did not stay fixed: comparative study of Joseon recipe books finds the filling gaining minced beef by the 19th-century Gyuhap chongseo, while the wider tender-chicken tradition flowed toward the ginseng-and-rice chicken soups (연계백숙, 계삼탕) ancestral to modern samgyetang.

Ingredients

• bird young chicken
• thick dark soy sauce
• oil
• perilla leaf
• scallion
• Chinese chive
• ginger
• black pepper
• Sichuan pepper
• wheat flour

Instructions

1. Kill a young chicken the evening before and hang it upside down overnight.
2. Next morning pluck clean, remove entrails, and wash until no blood remains.
3. Make a thick stuffing sauce: strained dark soy, plenty of oil, chopped perilla/scallion/chive, ginger, black and Sichuan pepper, bound with wheat flour.
4. Stuff the sauce into the cavity, wrap the bird in a rice-cloth, tie, and set in an earthenware bowl.
5. Steam by double-boiler in a pot of water until very tender; cool and serve. A looser sauce soaks in better.