Cycle 15 – Item 22

27 (Sat) January 2024

Taste Test: Packaged Beef Bone Stock

(Miyeok Guk)

3.0

by me

at home

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with the Family

Beef bone stock is a Korean cooking ingredient.  Bones – ideally shank bones (sagol) (see generally 3.361 Sagol Tang) – are boiled in water for several hours, resulting in a thick stock, opaquely white from the calcium.  The stock forms the basis of many beef soups, most notably seolleong tang (see for example 4.192 Seolnong Tang – Teuk) and gom tang (see for example 3.353 Gom Tang), also ddeok guk (see generally 1.323 Ddeok Mandu Guk), miyeok guk (see generally 7.054 Miyeok Guk with Sundubu).  But it can be added to almost anything, even non-Korean dishes (see for example 15.020 Beef & Sausage Stew), to provide hidden depth of flavor.

Because of the time, effort, and cost of making beef bone stock at home, it is more commonly purchased ready-made in a package.  For decades, Ottogi was the only mainstream producer, as far as I’m aware, but seemingly overnight the market is now rife with options from other companies.

A blind taste test was conducted on 6 brands – with eyes closed (so I couldn’t see the color), assisted by IZ to guide my hand, I sampled a spoonful of each one in random order, with a gargle of palate-cleansing water in between.

The results, in descending order of preference, along with tasting notes:

1. Yangban Hanwoo (3.5): “light and lean, very beefy (hanwoo?)”
2. Yangban Jinguk (3.5): “beefy, good seasoning, a bit fatty”
3. Ottogi (2.5): “clean flavor, beefy, lean”
4. Pulmuone (2.0): “little beef flavor, bland yet salty, odd aftertaste”
5. Bibigo (1.5): “strange aroma (scallion?), artificial aftertaste”
6. Cheongjeongwon (1.0): “salty, weird, artificial aftertaste”

Happily surprised to discover that Yangban took the top two spots.  They were the only ones that tasted really good as is.  Appearance-wise (which I wasn’t aware of during the tasting), they look the most refined.  Even better, they’re perennially “on sale” at The J Mart for 990 won each; the Hanwoo variation, presumably costlier to produce, comes in a 450 ml portion, compared to 500 ml for the standard pack – the other brands hover around 2,000 won for 500 ml – in fact, the reduced price had made me suspicious, prompting me to conduct the taste test.

Gratified that Ottogi, which I’ve used for years, came in at a respectable third.

Very disappointed at the poor showing by Pulmuone, generally my favorite Korean food producer.

But the final lesson may be the most important.  Putting the others in containers and refrigerating them for future use, I took the two lowest rated stocks from Bibigo and Cheongjeongwon, which tasted terrible during the testing, and made them into miyeok guk.  The soup, with the addition of garlic and sesame oil and Yeondu and pepper, and of course the kelp (miyeok), turned out just fine.  Thus, the distinctions might only be noticeable when served in a pure gomtang.

(See also HANSIK)

(See also PULMUONE)