Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup)

Name: Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 2 h 30 min
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 80 g glutinous rice (also sold as sweet or sticky rice); 8 garlic cloves, peeled; 4 dried jujubes, rinsed; 2 small fresh ginseng roots (about 15 g each; optional, see Tips); 2 poussins (young chickens, about 500 g each); 4 garlic cloves, peeled; 2 dried jujubes, rinsed; 4 peeled chestnuts (optional); 2 l water, or enough to just cover the birds; 2 spring onions, finely chopped; Coarse sea salt, to serve; Ground black pepper, to serve

A whole small chicken stuffed with sticky rice, garlic, jujubes and ginseng, simmered in a clear broth until it falls apart. You season it yourself at the table.

By the Soupmap Culinary Team

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 1 hr 15 min
Total: 2 hr 30 min
Effort: Easy
Serves: 2

The total includes 55 min of soaking, resting or chilling.

Broth richness 4/10

Spice 1/10

Comfort 9/10

Ratings by the Soupmap Culinary Team, not readers.

Gluten-free Dairy-free

Photo: Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Jeon Han), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Samgyetang means, more or less, ginseng (sam), chicken (gye) and soup (tang), and that is close to the whole recipe. A young chicken, small enough for one person, is stuffed with chapssal (glutinous rice), garlic, daechu (dried jujubes, a sweet, date-like fruit) and a root of ginseng, then simmered until the meat slides off the bone and the rice inside turns soft and sticky. It arrives unseasoned, each bird in its own bowl, with salt, pepper and spring onion for you to add as you eat.

In Korea it is famously eaten on boknal, three days that mark the hottest stretch of summer, on the principle of fighting heat with heat. It is just as welcome in winter.

The thing to get right is the stuffing. Fill each bird only about three-quarters full, because the rice swells as it cooks: packed tight, it stays hard in the middle or bursts out. Close the cavity firmly and simmer long enough that both the thigh and the rice at the centre are fully cooked. Everything here is naturally gluten-free, glutinous rice included: the name refers to its stickiness, not to gluten.

Method

Prepare

Rinse the rice in several changes of cold water until the water runs almost clear, then cover it with fresh cold water and soak for 1 hour. Drain well.
Meanwhile, remove any giblets from the birds and trim off the flap of fat at the cavity opening and the fatty tail, which can make the broth taste rank. Pat the birds dry inside and out with kitchen paper. There's no need to rinse them; that only splashes bacteria around, so wash your hands and board well afterwards.

Stuff

Into each bird, push 2 garlic cloves and 1 jujube, then a spoonful of rice, then the ginseng root, then the rest of that bird's rice, garlic and jujube. Stop when it is about three-quarters full and don't pack it down; any rice that doesn't fit can go into the pot.
Close the cavity: make a small slit, about 1 cm, through the loose skin on the inside of one thigh, cross the legs and push the end of the other drumstick through the slit so the legs lock together over the opening. If that's fiddly, tie the ends of the legs tightly together with kitchen string instead.

Simmer

Put the birds breast side up in a pot that holds them snugly (about 4 l). Add the extra garlic, jujubes and chestnuts, then pour in enough water to just cover the birds.
Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming off the foam that rises in the first few minutes. Turn the heat down to medium-low, cover and simmer for 1 hour, spooning broth over any part of the birds that pokes above the surface.
Check for doneness: a leg should wobble loosely and pull away easily, and the juices should run clear. On a thermometer, the thickest part of the thigh and the centre of the stuffing should both read at least 74°C (165°F). If the rice is still firm or either reading is short, simmer for 15 minutes more and check again.

Serve

Lift each bird carefully into a deep bowl and ladle the broth over, with the garlic, jujubes and chestnuts from the pot. Put out salt, pepper and spring onion for each person: pull the meat apart with chopsticks or a spoon, dip it in salt and pepper, and stir the rice into the broth, seasoning it as you go.

Swaps

Cooking for coeliac disease or an allergy? Check every label: the notes below say which ones matter.

Gluten-free

Already gluten-free as written: glutinous rice contains no gluten despite its name, and the broth is seasoned only with salt and pepper. If you use a ready-made samgyetang herb pack (see Variations), check its label.

Plant-based

Samgyetang is the bird, so there's no true plant-based version. For a bowl in the same spirit, soak 10 g kombu and 4 dried shiitake in 1.2 l cold water for at least 3 hours, heat it slowly and lift out the kombu before it boils, then simmer the soaked rice, garlic, jujubes, chestnuts, ginseng and sliced shiitake in it, stirring often, until the rice is soft and the broth has thickened, about 40 minutes. Add cubes of firm tofu for the last 10 minutes. It's closer to a ginseng rice porridge than to samgyetang, and vegan.

High-protein

Already generous: a whole poussin gives each person roughly 50 g protein.
For more, tuck 2 chicken drumsticks (about 250 g in all) into the pot around the birds, with a little extra water to cover, and simmer until they read 74°C next to the bone: about 15 g more per bowl.

Tips

Soak the rice. The centre of the bird is the last place to cook, and unsoaked glutinous rice can stay chalky there even when the meat is done.
Leave room in the cavity. Three-quarters full is right: the rice roughly doubles in volume as it cooks.
Ginseng is optional. Fresh ginseng (susam) is sold in Korean grocers. Dried ginseng is stronger, so use one small root or about 5 g per bird. Without it, the soup is gentler and more garlicky but still lovely; you lose its slightly bitter, earthy note.
Stuff just before cooking. Never stuff the birds ahead of time, and make sure the stuffing reaches 74°C, as it absorbs raw chicken juices.
Use a snug pot. A pot that just fits the birds means less water to cover them, and a richer broth.
Season little and often. The broth is unseasoned on purpose. Add salt a pinch at a time to your bowl; it is easy to overshoot.

Make ahead and storage

You can soak the rice and trim the birds a few hours ahead; keep the birds in the fridge and stuff them just before cooking.
For leftovers, take the stuffing out of the birds and strip the meat from the bones. Chill the meat, rice and broth within 1 hour, in shallow containers, and eat within 1 day, reheating until piping hot.
Leftover broth, rice and shredded meat make a good rice porridge the next day: simmer them together, stirring, until thick, 15–20 minutes.

Variations

One larger chicken: for 3–4 people, stuff a 1.3–1.5 kg chicken with double the stuffing, use about 3 l water and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, checking both thigh and stuffing reach 74°C.
With astragalus: add 10 g dried astragalus root (hwanggi) to the broth. Ready-made samgyetang herb packs often include it; check the label if you need the soup gluten-free.
Mung bean samgyetang: replace a quarter of the rice with split mung beans, soaked with the rice.

Reviews & cooks' tips

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