Kongnamul-gukbap

Soybean sprouts have long been a Jeolla staple, and Jeonju — a city famed for its bean sprouts and its cooking — is regarded as the national home of soybean-sprout rice soup. The dish is documented as a Jeonju specialty in references on regional Korean food, where two service styles are distinguished: the Nambu Market style, in which the rice is warmed by toryeom and served barely simmering with a side of suran, and a boiled style cooked together in an earthenware pot. Its reputation as a hangover cure is long-standing and is the reason it is eaten in the morning, often with the lightly fermented rice drink moju; the exact date the dish took shape is unrecorded.

Spoon in and the broth is hot, clean and savoury, edged with garlic and a chili-and-scallion warmth rather than a deep burn. The soybean sprouts stay crisp and snap between the teeth, the rice grains sit loose and soft in the liquid, and toasted gim crumbled in adds a salty, sea-like fragrance. The suran on the side is soft enough to slip whole into the mouth, its yolk smoothing the heat. It eats light and bracing — the kind of bowl meant to clear a heavy head.

Soybean sprouts are the point. As the soybean germinates it synthesises compounds absent in the dormant bean, among them the amino acid asparagine, which is concentrated in the fine root tails — the part Korean cooks are careful not to trim away. Asparagine is the reason the soup is reputed to ease a hangover: it is said to aid the body in clearing acetaldehyde, the toxic by-product of alcohol. The broth itself is built clean and fast from dried anchovy and the sprouts, kept clear rather than emulsified; in the Nambu Market method the rice is heated only by repeated toryeom so the grains stay separate and the sprouts keep their snap.