Cycle 4 – Item 197
21 (Sun) July 2013
Salchisal
1.5
by me
at home
-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
with W and DJ
Wanting to avoid Sunday traffic back into the city, we decided to eat dinner locally and go home late. So long as we were at it, being in the country’s most famous beef region, the in-laws wanted to eat beef. A small butcher shop nearby, affiliated with a ranch, had the goods. However, the meat isn’t any cheaper than it is in Seoul, maybe even more, like how wines from Napa Valley tend to be pricier when purchased in Napa Valley.
Salchisal (살치살) is a Korean cut of beef. Marbled to the utmost, to the point of absurdity, especially on hanwoo, exactly how Koreans like their meat. The most expensive cut of all, typically around 8,000 won per 100 grams at a supermarket, I’ve seen it sold as high as 29,000 won, and I’m sure that it can go higher, over 50,000 won at a restaurant. In one on-line dictionary, the cut is referred to as “chuck tail flap” in English, though that doesn’t feel right. When I asked the butcher, he explained that it’s the end of the ribeye, the fattiest section, previously sold as ribeye, and still sometimes is, but more often these days as a separate premium cut. Fat aside, it doesn’t really have much beef flavor, exactly how Koreans like their meat.
According to several on-line sources, “Margaret Mead wrote in the American Anthropological Journal of the American Anthropological Association: ‘Cultures that divided and cut beef specifically to consume are the Koreans and the Bodi tribe in East Africa. The French and the English make 35 differentiations to the beef cuts, 51 cuts for the Bodi tribe, while the Koreans differentiate beef cuts into a staggering 120 different parts.'”
Bullshit. Off the top of my head, confirmed by an internet search in Korean for “cuts of beef,” and by asking everyone that I know – except my father, who believes that Koreans are superior in everything, so of course we’d have more terminology for beef than anyone else – I can only think of around 20 cuts at most. Granted, specialists may have several additional terms, but no way anywhere close to 120.
Oddly, none of the references provide a date or citation for the Mead quote, making me think that someone had imprecisely paraphrased the source material at first, whatever that was, and others thereafter just cut-and-paste without verification, resulting in the exact same phrasing across the board. Further, Mead’s field was sexual anthropology, particularly within the Southern Pacific, so her expertise on Korean beef practices seems dubious. In fact, when she was active during the 1960s-1970s, Korean beef culture was still in its nascency – my mother tells me that all cuts during that time, while differentiated for purpose, were sold at the same price – so the 120 was even more unlikely back then.
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)