People say good health care in spring enables you to easily withstand summer heat and proper physical training in autumn enables you to easily resist winter cold.
Loach soup can be claimed to be one of the health-promoting foods good enough for people to easily resist winter cold.
Loach soup is called chuothang in Korean which means a fish soup taken in autumn. It is widely known among the Korean people as a health food in autumn.
Emerging as a speciality of the Kaesong area, it widely spread throughout Korea for its high nutritional and edible value and developed into a traditional food.
Especially, the soup was much used for invigorating the infirm and promoting the growth of children.
“Loach is an excellent health food as it is quite digestible and invigorating and especially effective in restoring liver functions. The health-promoting effect of loach soup is strongest in autumn and therefore Koreans have prepared the soup with fleshy and nourishing loach in autumn to invigorate themselves,” said Kim Ok Sim, cook of the Mangyongdae Loach Soup House.
The method of preparing the soup varies according to local areas.
The following is a recipe used in Kaesong.
Oil is poured on a frying pan to broil slices of Welsh onion and ginger. After their colours change, the roughly processed loaches are added to be panbroiled together. Then hot water is poured to boil them.
The boiled fish is taken out to season the flesh.
Beef is minced, seasoned with Welsh onion, garlic, soy and oil and roasted and loach juice is added to boil them together.
Tofu slices are added to be boiled and then hot pepper paste, sliced crown daisy, parsley and green pepper and seasoned loach flesh are all put in to be boiled before the dish is served in a vessel.
Here is another recipe. Loaches are put into salt water to make them vomit silt and washed clean. They are put into uncurdled bean curd and tofu is made with this. The tofu is served with spiced soy sauce or cut into slices to cook soup.
One common thing of all the local recipes is that ginger juice, betony or powdered prickly ash fruit is added into the boiling soup to add unique flavour and fragrance.
According to Kim Ok Sim, the Koreans have long used loaches in their diet and historical records of the feudal Joson dynasty also contain the fact.
At present there are many restaurants specializing in loach soup in Pyongyang and local areas and it is prepared at families as well.
The soup was inscribed on the list of Korean national intangible cultural heritage in 2017.
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