Japchae

Japchae (잡채) is a Korean dish of stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables. It was once served at banquets and holiday feasts and was enjoyed at the royal court of the Joseon dynasty. Today it is known as dangmyeon noodles with carrot, onion and often meat, but the original dish was something quite different.

The name means a gathering of assorted vegetables: the 'jap' refers to variety. The critic Hwang Gwanghae, writing in the magazine of Korea's Hansik institute, argues it should not be read as 'confusion', because the variety is a compliment.

The original japchae had no noodles: it was a dish of namul. Jang Gyehyang's Eumsikdimibang lists over 20 kinds: raw sliced cucumber, radish, mung bean sprouts and mushrooms, and blanched or torn bellflower root, bracken, angelica, eggplant and pheasant. High-ranking officials exchanged japchae as a gift. The author calls the noodle version 'dangmyeon japchae' and regards it as a distortion of the original. When the noodles joined japchae the source does not say; it notes only that dangmyeon reached Korea with Chinese migrants at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Korean government recipe promoted for the PyeongChang 2018 Games goes like this. For four servings, 100 g of glass noodles are boiled for five minutes and rinsed in cold water. Carrot and onion are stir-fried with salt, chives are cut up, and burdock root is simmered in soy sauce with sugar. The noodles are then stir-fried with a marinade of soy sauce, two kinds of sugar and oil until dry. Everything is mixed and portioned. According to the recipe, the sugar keeps the noodles from going soggy and makes them shiny, and meat can be replaced by other vegetables.

Why it matters to you. Japchae is easy to make vegetarian: the Korean recipe replaces meat with other vegetables. And if you want the old version, look for japchae made of namul, with no noodles.