When it comes to eating these days, healthier options are definitely a plus, especially given the amount of sitting that we have done over the past few years during the pandemic.
Taking away the fried food, which is often coated in oil, is a great start when trying to improve your diet. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy lots of delicious foods.
Jungol, or Hot pot, is a boiled dish in Korea, where the food is brought and cooked right at your table. There are many different types of Jungol in Korean, such as mushroom, and really you can put in almost any ingredient that you like.
Recently, I was at a restaurant on Geoje Island that served Jungol. This restaurant, Jung-dam, had a few different menu choices, and for me the most interesting one was the one that included mandu (dumplings), kalguksu (hand-cut noodles), and shaved beef along with lots of vegetables like bean sprouts and mushrooms.
I ordered a small size of the Suk-uh Jungol, which had both the noodles and dumplings, and the hot pot was brought almost right away to my table.
The dumplings were already in the soup along with the veg.
The shaved beef came on a separate plate.
And the kalguksu was also on a separate plate.
The owner of the restaurant said that we should put the shaved beef in after the water started to boil, and then the kalguksu could be put in after a while so that there was room for it to cook and also absorb the flavours of the broth.
Waiting patiently for the soup to boil was tough, but it gave me a chance to try the pickled cabbage and the kimchi that was provided as side dishes.
There was also some spicy peppers and some soy sauce mixed with wasabi to dip the food in when it was ready to cook.
After a bit, the soup was boiling happily, and the mandu was ready to try.
The mandu actually came in two varieties, meat and kimchi.
The meat mandu was very nice, with a good amount of meat inside, but also some vegetables as well, and noodles too. The flavor was good, and very rich.
The kimchi mandu was a bit spicy, and the inside was a nice rich red. These were also delicious, but I did prefer the meat mandu to the kimchi mandu.
While I was enjoying the mandu, some of the shaved beef had been cooking in the water. Because the beef is so thin, it doesn’t take long to cook it.
The shaved beef was very tender, and had a really nice fresh taste to it. When it was mixed with the soy-sauce wasabi sauce though, WOW! It was so delicious!!
Finally it was time to put in the kalguksu, and it also didn’t take long for the noodles to cook. However the longer they were in the broth, the softer they became, and also the more of the soup flavors they absorbed, making them more delicious.
The noodles were very good, although they didn’t look fresh when they were on the plate before cooking.
I really enjoyed the Jungol meal at Jung-dam restaurant.
The beef, mandu, and kalguksu were all very tasty.
There was also lots of mushrooms…
And bean sprouts to enjoy, along with some green onions.
After enjoying my delicious lunch, I went for a nice walk, as Jung-dam is right near Moon-dong waterfall. It was only a 10 to 15 minute walk to the waterfall, but it was a nice way to work off some of the calories from my tasty meal.
If you’re in Geoje, I would definitely recommend a trip to Jung-dam restaurant, and also the Moon-dong waterfall.
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