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Best Baeksuk in Chicago

“Chicken simmered for hours with nothing but water and garlic. Season your own bowl.”

Baeksuk

What the real thing tastes like

Baeksuk (Korean: 백숙; Hanja: 白熟) is a Korean culinary term referring to dishes made by boiling or steaming meat or fish to be cooked thoroughly without seasonings. Baeksuk is made with chicken or pheasant with plenty of water for several hours. However, the term generally indicates dakbaeksuk (닭백숙, chicken baeksuk), or chicken stew, whose recipe and ingredients are similar to samgyetang. While samgyetang is made with ginseng, various herbs, chestnuts, and jujubes, dakbaeksuk consists of simpler ingredients, such as chicken, water, and garlic. The chicken can be stuffed with glutinous rice. When the cooking is finished, salt and sliced Welsh onions (daepa, 대파) are added to the diner's bowl according to taste. If the baesuk is not stuffed with glutinous rice, it is usually eaten with cooked rice. It is often seen as a simpler and cheaper variant of samgyetang. Sometimes it is mistakenly used as another word for samgyetang.

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Baeksuk is a stripped-down comfort: chicken simmered for hours in plain water with garlic, emerging tender and mild. It's the everyday sibling to samgyetang—no ginseng, no elaborate herbs, just honest broth. You season your own bowl with salt and Welsh onions at the table, letting each spoonful be exactly as simple or savory as you want it.

Order it here when it has

  • simpler and cheaper than samgyetang
  • thoroughly cooked, tender meat
  • customizable to taste at table
  • works plain or with rice

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