By Kim Hayeon and Kang Haeeun
"How people talk about Hanwoo, this whole beef eating culture, all these 120 cuts... Koreans really care."
This is what Andrzej Rybak, a journalist from the German food magazine The Beef, said while visiting Korea to cover hanwoo (premium Korean beef).
Established in 2010, The Beef is a bi-monthly magazine featuring food like meat and barbeque and mostly targets men who love to cook meat and women who prefer a hearty meal to a vegetarian diet. Also translated into French, Spanish and Italian, the publication has nearly 200,000 readers in Germany and the same number in other European countries.
Since 1985, Rybak has traveled to 160 countries. In his first trip to Korea, he described his first impression by saying, "It's really a very well-organized country. Very modern, I would say very highly developed country"
"But most important are the Korean people: they are extremely friendly, very polite and well educated."
From Oct. 6, the journalist with support from Korea.net traveled around Korea for eight days to write an article about hanwoo.
On why he decided to cover hanwoo, he cited the popularity of Korean culture in Europe and the meat's relevance to his magazine.
"I realize that Korea is something very trendy. So everything about Korea has a good chance to be published," he said, "Korean hanwoo is exactly the type of story the magazine always looks for. It's part of Korean culture and tradition."
Traveling all corners of Korea such as Seoul; Yangpyeong-gun County, Gyeonggi-do Province; Daegu; Ulsan; Cheongdo-gun County, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province; and Jeonju, Jeollabuk-do Province, Rybak tasted a variety of Korean food such as seolleongtang (beef soup), bulgogi (stir-fried marinated grilled meat), hanwoo burger, beef tartare and a hanwoo course meal.
"In Korea, you watch how the meat is being prepared with this table grill. It's part of the process and the eating ritual," he said. "So with this table grill, this atmosphere is a kind of ritual of eating. And then the last moment when you bite, you feel this juice really just going around in your mouth on your palette and this explosion of taste. So it was really amazing."
On bulgogi, he said, "I will definitely remember the taste of several dishes forever."
On Sept. 12, the magazine's staff were invited to the Pungseok Cultural Foundation to taste the 18th-century hanwoo dishes jeonripto and jopyunpo as made by food restoration researchers.
Both dishes appear in the book Jeongjoji (Understanding Pot and Chopping Board) written by Seo Yu-gu (1764-1845), a neo-Confucian scholar and agricultural administrator of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910).
A Joseon military cap called beonggeoji is said to have been used as a pot to boil broth and cook vegetables and grill meat on the brim. Jopyunpo is a traditional dish in which minced meat is seasoned with salt, made into chunks, fermented and sliced into pieces.
"The Pungseok Cultural Foundation was definitely very special because of its way of preparation, these helmets, the grilling in the helmets and the fermented food. So these were very different things," he said. "Everything was simply beautiful. The old house and traditional dresses and preparation of fermented meat, It was beautiful and very interesting."
He also visited hanwoo farms, the association and a market at the Majang-dong neighborhood of Seoul's Seongdong-gu District to cover strict quality management of the meat and sales venue.
"He (the rancher) explained how everything developed in Korea in the last few years and how hard they're working to achieve a better and better quality of meat. He showed us the food he's giving to the cows, grains and maize," Rybak said, "So the cow has a very luxurious life."
"For a cow, 9.9 square m of space (is provided). It's amazing. In many countries, people don't have so much space to live," he added. Mentioning how cattle in Korea even have fans to cool off, he said, "So they (ranchers) are really trying to make the lives of the cows very comfortable."
"The marbling of hanwoo is incredible," he said after visiting a hanwoo market in the Majang-dong neighborhood, "That makes the meat very tender and juicy."
"But as people used to tell in Korea, there are 100 different tastes of hanwoo depending on cuts. The number of cuts is amazing. I don't know of any other countries that use so many cuts."
Korea's detailed butchery means about 120 parts per cow, translating into the highest number of cuts in the world. In addition to cooking nearly every part of a cow from head to tail, Koreans also use internal organs such as the stomach and liver as food ingredients. In comparison, Rybak said the U.S. uses about 22 cuts per cow and France and Britain some 35.
The last question for Rybak was about the most impressive things in his trip. His answer was simply "scissors."
"I understand that it makes sense to cut the meat. Even if you have a nice steak, you cut it into pieces because you're using chopsticks. Otherwise it would be difficult to eat. Every kind of meat we saw was grilled and cut with scissors. So scissors are an instrument you need when doing Korean barbecue," he said.
He said he has long thought of opening a restaurant in Germany while covering food around the world, adding, "So the first idea was opening a Georgian restaurant in Germany. The second idea was to open an Amazonian restaurant in Germany. But I changed my mind."
"Now I'm thinking maybe it's a good idea to open a Korean restaurant with all the table grills because Germans like barbecue very much. So if they have the chance to grill it on their table, I think a restaurant like that would be a great success."
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Rybak has lived in Germany for 40 years. Since 1985, he has worked as a journalist for German newspapers and magazines such as Der Spiegel, Financial Times Deutschland and Die Woche.
He was a correspondent in Russia for Die Woche from 1995-98 and in Poland for Der Spiegel from 1998-99. From 2000-01, he was a correspondent in Russia for the Financial Times Deutschland.
hayeounk8@korea.kr
