Byeongcheon-sundae

Byeongcheon (竝川) lies in Cheonan, Chungnam, beside the Aunae (아우내) market where Yu Gwan-sun and townspeople raised the cry for independence during the March 1st movement of 1919; the name Aunae, meaning the place where two streams join, was rendered into the hanja 竝川. The market itself is old: the Mokcheon-eupji gazetteer of 1779 already records a Byeongcheon market opening on days ending in 1 and 6, and a five-day market still meets on those dates. The sundae trade, however, is a 20th-century development: after a ham and pork-processing plant was set up near Byeongcheon in the 1960s, cooks began using the readily available intestines and blood to make a vegetable-heavy sausage, first sold from stalls only on market days. The shop usually called the original of the alley, Cheonghwa-jip, is said to have moved from a street stall into a fixed storefront in 1968, and the city's exemplary-restaurant designations along the street date from 1998; many sundae houses now line what is signposted as Aunae Sundae Street.

Served hot in its bowl of broth, a slice of Byeongcheon-sundae shows a dark, almost mahogany cross-section flecked with pale cabbage and the odd translucent strand of noodle. The thin small-intestine skin is tender rather than rubbery, giving way easily, while the filling is soft and moist, loosely set by the blood rather than dense and packed. The taste is savory and mildly mineral from the blood, sweetened and lightened by the cabbage and onion, with far less of the starchy chew that defines glass-noodle sundae. The clear pork-bone broth around it is pale and clean, rich without being greasy, easy enough that newcomers to blood sausage can drink it down.

The lightness is built into the ratios. Using the pig's thin small intestine instead of the fat large intestine gives a delicate skin and far less of the offal smell, which is also why the casing is first scrubbed clean with coarse salt and flour. Inside, cabbage and onion are the bulk, so the filling stays loose and juicy rather than gummy; sweet-potato glass noodle, whose starch swells and turns chewy when cooked, is used only in a small amount so it does not dominate. Pork blood is the binder: as the stuffed sausage is steamed or gently boiled, the blood's proteins coagulate around 70 to 80 degrees Celsius, trapping the vegetables and rice in a soft, sliceable set without any egg or flour. For the soup the blanched pork bones and meat are simmered long and low, kept near but below a rolling boil so the broth stays clear and pale rather than turning cloudy, and the cooked sausage is sliced into it to order.