Sundae

Origin

Sundae is descended from the Mongol-era blood-sausage tradition that arrived in the Korean peninsula via the Yuan dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Mongol gedes — a casing-stuffed dish — adapted to Korean ingredients as pig blood and intestine became readily available with sedentary agriculture, and survived as a peasant and market food through Joseon and into the modern period.

The modern street-stall sundae as Koreans recognise it today consolidated in the postwar 1950s and 60s , when industrial slaughterhouses made pig blood and intestine cheap and accessible, and a generation of market-stall vendors codified the glass-noodle-and-rice filling that distinguishes Korean sundae from its blood-sausage cousins elsewhere.

01

image pending

What it is

Pig intestine — usually small intestine, sometimes large — washed thoroughly and filled with a mixture of pig blood, glass noodles (dangmyeon), barley or sticky rice, scallion, and seasoning. The casing is tied off, the sausage is poached in water for around an hour until firm enough to slice, then served in 2 cm rounds on parchment with a small paper cup of broth and a pinch of salt-and-spice dip .

The slice is dense, faintly liver-tasting from the blood, slightly bouncy from the glass noodles, and earthy from the rice. The accompanying naejang (offal) — liver, lung, heart — is poached separately and laid on the side of the plate. The broth, the dip, and the slice are three components of a single meal ; none alone gives the dish.

02

image pending

Cultural context

Sundae is a market food before it is a restaurant food. Every traditional Korean market — Namdaemun in Seoul, Jagalchi in Busan, Seomun in Daegu — has multiple sundae stalls, identifiable by the long pink coils hanging behind glass and the stockpots steaming on the counter. The dish is the canonical pairing with tteokbokki , sold together as the bunsik (snack-food) twin from school-gate stalls and from open-counter chains.

The cultural status of sundae has been climbing through the 2010s and 2020s — restaurants like Byeongcheon Sundae and Abai Sundae have moved the dish from market-stall to mid-tier sit-down, and sundae-guk (sundae soup) has become a canonical hangover food alongside seolleongtang and kongnamul-guk.

03

image pending

Variations

The two dominant regional schools are Byeongcheon sundae (Chungcheong, more glass-noodle-heavy, smaller diameter) and Abai sundae (Sokcho-Hamgyeong, larger diameter, more rice and offal, descending from North Korean refugees who resettled in Sokcho after 1953). Within Seoul, market-stall sundae tends toward the Byeongcheon style; provincial restaurants offer Abai.

Modern menus include sundae-bokkeum (stir-fried sundae with vegetables and gochujang), sundae-guk (sundae in a clear bone broth), cheongyang sundae (with Cheongyang chili paste in the filling), and the polarising cheese sundae of the 2020s street-food revival.

04

image pending

How it’s made

The intestine is the slow part. Two-hour cleaning with coarse salt and flour before any filling can be considered, and even then the casing must be turned inside-out for a second pass. The filling — pig blood, glass noodles cooked al dente, barley or sticky rice, finely diced onion and garlic, scallion, salt — is mixed in a wide steel bowl and poured into the casing through a funnel.

The stuffed sausage is tied off in coils about 50 cm long and dropped into a stockpot of water with garlic and aromatics for an hour at gentle simmer . The internal temperature reaches around 80°C — hot enough to set the blood and gel the casing but not so hot that the intestine bursts. Cooled briefly, sliced on the bias, and served with broth ladled from the same pot.

References

The Mongol-era origin is documented in Lee Sung-woo ’s 한국요리문화사 (Kyomunsa, 1992). The Byeongcheon and Abai regional traditions are surveyed in Korea JoongAng Daily (December 2018) and in Kim Young-jin’s 시장의 음식 (Munhakdongne, 2020 ). The cultural elevation of sundae through the 2010s appears in Eater Seoul ’s 2019 sundae feature.