Jokbal족발

The name jokbal (족발) doubles up on itself: jok is the Sino-Korean character for "foot" (足), and bal is the native Korean word for the same thing. Koreans were cooking pig's feet long before the modern dish. A farming manual compiled by the scholar Choe Han-gi around 1830, Nongjeong Hoeyo, notes that trotters simmered until falling apart and dipped in vinegared soy sauce make a soft, mild delicacy. On Jeju Island, pig's feet were boiled down into a hearty soup, and piglet trotters still go by the local name agangbal.

The glossy, soy-braised jokbal we know today is said to descend from dwaejijok-jorim, a home-style dish from Hwanghae Province in what is now North Korea. The feet were boiled, then slowly glazed over low heat with dark taffy-like yeot, soy sauce and ginger. The usual story goes that refugees from the North who settled in Seoul's Jangchung-dong during the Korean War combined that hometown recipe with techniques from wuxiang pork, a Chinese five-spice braise, and began selling it to make a living. Trotters were considered scrap meat, so they were cheap enough for people who had lost almost everything.

Around 1960 a jokbal shop opened in Jangchung-dong, and as more opened nearby the area became known as "Jokbal Street." One often-told detail is that every newcomer also claimed to be the "original." From there the dish spread nationwide. Today jokbal, eaten with salted shrimp and lettuce wraps, is one of Korea's favorite late-night foods and drinking snacks, and a fiery chili-laced version called bul-jokbal has joined the lineup.