Gaejang (Stuffed-Intestine Dog)

History

Dog meat (gaejang) was an ordinary food in Joseon Korea, and Eumsik dimibang records it without ceremony: six methods run together here — a plain stew, two 느르미 (nureumi) grilled-and-sauced preparations, a steamed 개장챐, and two boiling techniques. Their sheer number is itself evidence of how unremarkable dog cookery was in a 17th-century yangban kitchen. In an agrarian society oxen were too valuable as draft animals to slaughter freely, so households leaned on dog and pheasant where a later cook might reach for beef. Dog meat also served as a summer restorative (보양): it was eaten above all on the three hottest days of the year, the 복날 or sambok (초복·중복·말복), when a hot, nourishing broth was thought to replenish energy drained by the heat, an "answer heat with heat" logic. The custom is old; the 19th-century customs record Dongguksesigi (1849) traces the bok-day dog rite to Qin-dynasty China and gives a dog-and-scallion soup, and scholars hold that dog was eaten on the peninsula for many centuries. Jang's stew is seasoned only with black pepper, cheoncho, ginger, sesame oil and soy — no chili, which had not yet reached the region. The dish name survives today in 육개장 (yukgaejang), the beef reworking that displaced the dog original.

Ingredients

• dog
• dog intestine
• black pepper
• Sichuan pepper
• ginger
• sesame oil
• clear soy sauce
• vinegar-mustard (or vinegar-soy)

Instructions

1. Kill and clean the dog, wash well, parboil lightly, and debone.
2. Mince the meat like dumpling filling; mix with black and Sichuan pepper, ginger, sesame oil, and clear soy sauce, keeping it not too wet.
3. Turn the intestine inside out, wash thoroughly, turn back, and stuff it full with the mixture.
4. Steam in a steamer over a slow fire about half a day; slice crosswise and dress with vinegar-mustard.
5. Prepare the intestine casing the day before: warm, season, mix, and rest overnight before stuffing.