Bossam보쌈

The star of bossam (보쌈) is boiled pork, or suyuk, and Koreans have been boiling meat for a very long time. During the Joseon dynasty, offerings at the royal ancestral shrine included beef, mutton and wild boar cooked in boiling water. The cookbook Siuijeonseo recommends vinegared soy sauce, salted-shrimp brine and chili powder as good partners for boiled pork. In South Gyeongsang Province, people simmered pork with doenjang, garlic and ginger and wrapped it in napa cabbage kimchi, which looks a lot like bossam as we know it.

The word bossam means wrapping something up like a bundle in a cloth (bo), and before the pork dish took off, the name was best known for a kimchi. Bossam kimchi, a specialty of Kaesong, was a luxury: a filling of radish, cabbage, fruit and seafood tucked into wide cabbage leaves and folded up like a parcel. The oldest known record is a 1924 newspaper article explaining how the royal court made it. Each parcel was kept in its own little crock and opened only when elders or guests came to the table.

Boiled pork wrapped in kimchi took off as a restaurant dish in the late 1980s. Diners loved the crunchy, sweet radish kimchi served alongside the pork, and from the 1990s chain restaurants spread the dish fast. As a result, many people now think "bossam kimchi" means that radish kimchi rather than the rare Kaesong original. At home, bossam is especially cherished on kimjang day, eaten with freshly made kimchi once the year's big batch is done.