THE FAMOUS FOOD " KOREA EDITION"

JAJANGMYEON

ANNYEONG HASEYO....

   Welcome back onijjang readers , in this post im going to share one of korean famous food that i really like but never ever taste before , the real one i mean in korea hahahah....

   Why i excited????? Because the sound people when they slurp the nooddle is really iconic and make you craving, and everyone already know when korean idol is doing some of eating show how they will make people who watch will craving some of it too..

   They even have an eating show, or trend or " some action" that called mukbang or meokbang that mean you eating a ton of food alone or together with your friend until you almost die i mean finished that an usual portion of food, i mean yeah that like for 10 people but you eat that alone so fantastic right!!!!

   So here one of food that people always do in eating show, this food called jajangmyeon or jajangmyun.q

KAMSAHABNIDA...

   Jajangmyeon (자장면) or jjajangmyeon (짜장면) is a Korean Chinese noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of chunjang, diced pork and vegetables. A variant of the dish uses seafood.

   Jajangmyeon (자장면) (Black Bean Sauce Noodles) is a Chinese cuisine adapted to the Korean style served in most of the Chinese restaurants in South Korea and has now become a favourite food among the Koreans.  
   You can often see people eating jajangmyeon in Korean TV dramas and variety shows. It is said that every day over 7 million bowls of jajangmyeon are sold in South Korea.

What is Jajangmyeon?

   Jajangmyeon is a non-spicy dish of thick noodles (made from white wheat flour) served with a thick dark brown sweet sauce which is made from a salty black bean soybean paste called chunjang (춘장)

CHUNJANG

stir-fried with diced onions, minced pork/beef and sometimes other vegetables.  
   Usually, the sauce is placed on the top of the noodles and people use chopsticks to mix the noodles with the sauce before eating. I found this mixing ritual indeed quite interesting. You can watch this video to see how the mixing is done. 

DANMUJI

   The side dish usually served with this dish is danmuji (단무지 – pickled radish) which is yellow in colour and sweet.  The danmuji helps reduce the greasiness of the dish.

Jajang (자장; alternately spelled jjajang 짜장) derived from the Chinese word zhájiàng (炸酱), which means "fried sauce". Myeon (면) means "noodles". 

   The Chinese characters are pronounced jak (작; 炸) and jang (장; 醬) in Korean, but the noodle dish is called jajangmyeon, not jakjangmyeon, because its origin is not the Sino-Korean word, but the transliteration of the Chinese pronunciation. As the Chinese pronunciation of zhá sounded like jja (rather than ja) to Korean ears, the dish has been known in South Korea as jjajangmyeon, and the vast majority of Korean Chinese restaurants use this spelling

Jajang (자장; alternately spelled jjajang 짜장) derived from the Chinese word zhájiàng (炸酱), which means "fried sauce".
   Myeon (면) means "noodles". The Chinese characters are pronounced jak (작; 炸) and jang (장; 醬) in Korean, but the noodle dish is called jajangmyeon, not jakjangmyeon, because its origin is not the Sino-Korean word, but the transliteration of the Chinese pronunciation. 
   As the Chinese pronunciation of zhá sounded like jja (rather than ja) to Korean ears, the dish has been known in South Korea as jjajangmyeon, and the vast majority of Korean Chinese restaurants use this spelling

cheol gabang (iron bag)

   “If we link all the noodle strips of jajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) Koreans eat a day, they would be long enough to go around the globe one and a half times.” 
   “Some say cheolgabang (literally “iron bag,” a steel box with a handle used in delivering food from restaurants) originated from wooden boxes the Chinese have used to deliver food since ancient times or the wooden “bags” the Japanese have used since the Edo period to deliver their udon noodles. 

   Their exact origin notwithstanding, the iron boxes used by Chinese-style restaurants are among the 52 representative Korean designs selected by the Korea Design Foundation.” A unique academic book about the black bean noodles was recently published. 
   Titled “A Story of Jajangmyeon” (Jajangmyeon dyeon), the book was written by Yang Se-uk, a research professor of Chinese language and literature at Hanyang University. 
   Its preface is as solemn and heroic as the introductory part of a martial arts fiction: “Toward the end of the 19th century when Korea and China were both seeking modern diplomatic relations, jajangmyeon silently crossed the Yellow Sea and stealthily landed on the Korean peninsula.

   As a result of groping blindly in the dark for a half century, jajangmyeon’s black charm finally captivated the Korean people in the mid 20th century.” 
   Professor Yang has visited more than 100 Chinese restaurants in China and Korea since 2003 to look for the true origin of the black bean noodles, which has been known to be “non-existent” in its homeland. 

   Based on his strenuous field investigations, the author reached the conclusion that “jajangmyeon originated from a type of home-cooked dish eaten by the Chinese in the Shandong area.
   ” The book, however, is not about the origin of these black noodles. The author explains, “It is about the symbolism of jajangmyeon ― a bowl of these noodles stands for the mixture of a history of Korean living culture, a modern and contemporary history of Korean-Chinese exchanges and a history of overseas Chinese in Korea.” 

   The core content is an exploration of the curiosity as to “how this Chinese-originated food has achieved such a big success in Korea,” a study undertaken from the perspective of cultural history.
   Professor Yang cites two reasons for the popularity of jajangmyeon. First, dining out became a new culture in Korean society as urban population rapidly increased after the 1950s. “Chinese food was an appropriate choice for many Koreans in view of their economic situation at the time. 

   It was different from their everyday meals, but was cheaper than Japanese or Western food,” Yang says. Industrialization was another factor cited. “At a time when everything had to be done quickly, quickly, jajangmyeon was an ideal food. 
   It could be cooked in three minutes and eaten in another three minutes,” he says. There were other social factors, too. The Chinese who had been living in Korea had no place to return and they even had to give up trade with their home country after the communists seized mainland China in 1949. 

   As a result, a large number of Chinese residents in Korea turned to dining business. According to Professor Yang, some 40.3 percent of the Chinese in Korea were engaged in restaurant business in 1949, but the figure jumped to 77 percent in 1972. 

   “There was a saying that the Chinese brought with them three kinds of knives when they came to Korea,” Yang says. “They were jeondo (jiandao in Chinese), or scissors, for running dry goods stores; chedo (tidao), or shaving razors, for barbershops; and chaedo (caidao), or cooking knives, for dining places. Of these, the cooking knives began displaying their power.”

   Jajangmyeon also got a boost when the government actively encouraged people to eat rice mixed with other grains and food made from flour to cope with shortages in rice production in the 1960s to the 1970s. 
   People began to change their notion of flour-based food as a mere substitute food. Professor Yang contends, however, that the popularity of jajangmyeon is “going downhill” these days. 

  Since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, fast food restaurants have mushroomed, offering a myriad of foods that compete against Chinese food. 
   Jajangmyeon has provided subjects in various art genres, such as a movie (The Great Chef: Peking Restaurant), a drama (Jajangmyeon is Getting Swollen), a children’s story (Jajangmyeon), a poem (Eating Jajangmyeon), and a popular song (Jjamppong and Jajangmyeon). 

   However, Professor Yang says, there has been no book written about the subject with a serious academic approach. “Jajangmyeon is an important object in Korean daily life, but it has not been properly examined. 
   I felt the need to academically define the position of jajangmyeon as a subject for the history of our living culture before its status descends further. I regarded it as a kind of etiquette to the food we have loved so much.”

handmade noodle

Noodles

   Jajangmyeon uses thick noodles made from white wheat flour. The noodles, which are made entirely by hand and not by machines, are called sutamyeon (수타면; 手打麵) are praised in South Korea as an essential ingredient of good jajangmyeon.

Sauce

   While in Beijing cuisine, yellow soybean paste (黃醬) is used, in Tianjin and other parts of China tianmianjiang (甜麵醬), hoisin sauce (海鮮醬), or broad (fava) bean sauce (荳瓣醬) may be used in place of the yellow soybean paste. 


   However, In Korea, the sauce is made with a dark soybean paste.

This paste, which is made from roasted soybeans and caramel, is called chunjang (literally "spring paste", hangul: 춘장; Chinese: 春醬) when unheated, while the heated sauce (containing vegetables and meat or seafood) is called jjajang (literally "fried sauce").
   Chunjang is stir-fried with diced onions, ground meat (either beef or pork) or chopped seafood, and other ingredients. 

   The meat stock is added to reduce the salty taste, and potato starch or cornstarch is added to give the sauce a thick consistency. The sauce is served hot over noodles, sometimes with sliced raw cucumbers. 
   The same sauce is also used to make jajangbap (rice served with the sauce) and jajangtteokbokki (tteokbokki made with the sauce instead of the usual spicy sauce).

Accompaniments

   Jajangmyeon is usually served with a small amount of danmuji (단무지). Danmuji are made of radish, specifically daikon. The dish is often served with a small amount of sliced raw onions, seasoned with rice vinegar, accompanied with a little chunjangsauce. The diner eats the noodle with danmuji and onions dipped in chunjang sauce.

Variations

GANJAJANG

Variations of the jajangmyeon dish include gan-jjajang, jaengban-jjajang, yuni-jjajang, and samseon-jjajang.

   Gan-jjajang (간짜장) – Jajangmyeon with the dry sauce made without adding water (stock) and starch slurry. The letter gan came from Chinese pronunciation of the letter 乾(Korean hanja: 乾; reading: 건, geon; Chinese simplified character: 干; reading: gān) meaning "dry".

JAENGBAN

   Jaengban-jjajang (쟁반짜장) – Jajangmyeon made by stir-frying the parboiled noodles with the sauce in a wok, and served on a plate instead of in a bowl. Jaengban means "plate" in Korean.

   Yuni-jjajang (유니짜장) – Jajangmyeon made with ground meat. The word yuni derived from the Korean reading of the Chinese word ròuní (肉泥; Korean reading: 육니, yungni) meaning "ground meat".

YUNI JAJANG

   Although yungni is not a word in Korean, the loanword yuni, used only in the dish name yuni-jjajang, is likely to have been derived from the Chinese immigrants' pronunciation of the Korean reading of the word, with the dropping of the coda k (or ng, due to the Korean phonotactics) which is difficult for native Chinese speakers to pronounce.

SAMSEON JJAJANG

   Samseon-jjajang (삼선짜장) – Jajangmyeon which incorporates seafood such as squid and mussel. The word samseon derived from the Korean reading of the Chinese word sānxiān (三鲜) meaning "three fresh ingredients"

There can be combinations. For example. samseon-gan-jjajang may refer to seafood jajangmyeon made without adding water.

Dishes such as jajang-bap and jajang-tteok-

JAJANGBAP

bokki also exist. Jajang-bap is essentially the same dish as jajangmyeon, but served with rice instead of noodles. Jajang-tteok-bokki is tteok-bokki served with jajang sauce instead of the usual spicy sauce.

Instant jajangmyeon, such as Chapagetti, Chacharoni, and Zha Wang, are instant noodle versions of jajangmyeon that consists of dried noodles that are boiled in the same manner as ramyeon using dried vegetable bits that are drained and mixed with jajang powder or liquid jajang sauce, as well as a small amount of water and oil.

   Jajangmyeon (자장면) or Jjajangmyeon (짜장면)

There has been some confusion as to the correct Korean word for this dish.  
   Initially, the Korean word “자장면” (jajangmyeon) was regarded as the standard term but a lot of Koreans pronounced it as jjajangmyeon (짜장면) because it was easier to pronounce and sounded better. Nowadays, both words are accepted as the standard terms for the dish.

Black Day (14 April) is the Jajangmyeon Day

   the Black Day on which singles who do not have lovers to celebrate the Valentine’s Day on 14 February and the White Day on 14 March wear black to “celebrate” this day together.  
   One of the “must-eat” food on this day is jajangmyeon which has a dark sauce.

Jajangmyeon in Pop Culture

   Jajangmyeon is also a popular food often appearing in the Korean TV dramas and variety shows.  
   Jajangmyeon is a favourite food used for eating contests because after the contestants have eaten the dish very quickly, the faces and mouths of the contestants are smeared with the black bean sauce which looks funny.

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