Cold Chicken Soup(Chogyetang)

9 min readJul 6, 2024

….The heat has finally come. Although we are not used to the hot weather, we have to endure it for a few days. My aging husband is finding more and more things uncomfortable as time passes, almost as if he is rejecting the present time. I pray every day that he can face time more comfortably, given how well he has lived his life without inconvenience. People say that when you are together, you start to resemble each other, so now I want to share more of my positive and bright mind with him. Today, for my husband, I made Chogyetang with great care. This is a chicken soup flavored with vinegar, mustard, and shredded chicken. It is a low-calorie meal often served with buckwheat noodles. It’s a great tonic food for the heat because it can be eaten cold.

After removing the chicken skin and boiling the chicken broth thoroughly, I cooled it down, strained it through a cloth to remove the fat, and flavored it to be tangy, sweet, and clean. When my husband takes a big bite of the vegetables he likes, the heat disappears in an instant. Especially in the hot summer, I mixed mustard powder with hot water, let it sit in a warm place for a few hours, then added pear juice, vinegar, sugar, and salt to make it deliciously mild and slightly spicy. I chose the vegetables in beautiful and harmonious colors and slightly froze the broth to first convey a sense of coolness visually.

I tell myself that we must be feeling a bit better today. I believe we will endure well and get through this.

Servings: 2–3

Time: 1 hour and 20 minutes plus 5 hours for making chicken broth in the refrigerator

Ingredients:

800 g of chicken, skins removed and cleaned
1/2 cucumber, sliced
100 g red cabbage, julienned
50 g radish sprouts
150 g tomato, sliced
4 eggs, beat
avocado oil to taste
two pinches of salt

For chicken broth:

10 cups water
1/2 onion
3 green onion
5 garlic cloves
15 g fresh ginger
1 tsp whole black pepper

For chicken broth sauce:

4 cups(800 ml) chicken broth
5 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp gukganjang
1 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp hamcho salt

For chicken meat seasoning:

2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp hamcho salt
black pepper to taste

Cooking Instructions:

Heat a pot over high heat. Clean the prepared chicken thoroughly, then place it in the pot with 10 cups of water, onions, scallions, garlic, ginger, and peppercorns. Boil for 1 hour. (Today, I made three times the amount of chicken broth and will freeze the remainder for future use. I used 2400g of chicken and 30 cups of water.)

2. While boiling, remove any floating bubbles with a spoon.

3. After 1 hour, remove the vegetables from the pot and place the cooked chicken on a tray. Set it aside to cool down.

4. After cooling down, transfer the chicken broth to a container and refrigerate it to allow the fat to separate.

5. After cooling down, strain 4 cups of chicken broth through a cheesecloth to remove any fat.

6. Add the vinegar, sugar, gukganjang, mustard, and hamcho salt to the chicken broth.

7. Pour the chicken broth into a plastic bottle, place it in the freezer, and take it out every hour to shake it gently, adjusting the concentration to achieve the desired richness, if desired.

8. Meanwhile, separate the cooked chicken meat from the bones.

6. Add the vinegar, sugar, mustard, garlic, hamcho salt, and black pepper to a bowl. Put the chicken meat in another bowl and gently mix in the sauce. Set aside.

7. Beat the egg in a bowl and add two pinches of salt.

8. Heat up a pan with low heat and add some avocado oil(remove some oil with a paper towel, if it’s oily).

9. Pour the egg into the pan to spread thinly, turn off the heat and let it cook on the hot pan for 1 minute. Flip it over and let it sit on the pan for 1 more minute.