Specialty Dishes · Queen of Tables · Queen of Tables

Bossam

Bossam (Boiled Pork Wraps) · 보쌈

Difficulty: Medium
Time to plan: 90 min
Serves: 3 servings
Recipe: 5 steps
Listed places: 2

Food notes and context

Bossam pairs cooked pork with cabbage, leaves and kimchi for wrapping. This recipe boils a piece of belly or shoulder before slicing it, unlike pork belly cooked on a grill.

Ask about the pork cut and the included kimchi and salted shrimp. Try the meat and accompaniments separately before making a small wrap, allowing control over how much seasoning accompanies the pork.

Cook this version

Images are AI-generated illustrations, not records of a kitchen test. Follow the written ingredients and steps. Ingredients and substitutions guide

Ingredients (3 servings)

Ingredient	Amount	Substitute abroad
Pork belly block or shoulder	800g	Pork neck
Doenjang, garlic, scallion, peppercorns	For the boiling water	Bay leaves, half a spoon of coffee
Salted cabbage or lettuce	Plenty for wrapping	Fresh baby cabbage leaves
Kimchi (fresh-made is best)	1 big bowl	Radish salad
Salted shrimp (saeujeot)	1 saucer	A dash of anchovy sauce
Raw garlic and chili	To taste	Can skip

Step by step

1.Season the water
Bring a large pot of water to a boil with doenjang, garlic, scallion, and peppercorns.
2.Boil the pork
Lower the whole block into boiling water and simmer 50 to 60 minutes on medium-low.
3.Ready the kimchi
Toss a fresh kimchi or slice well-ripened kimchi; radish salad on the side is even better.
4.Rest and slice
Rest the pork 10 minutes, then slice thick on a board and fan onto a platter.
5.Wrap and eat
Load a cabbage leaf with pork, kimchi, garlic, and salted shrimp, and eat in one bite.

Measurement, doneness and storage references

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Places to check when planning a meal

Candidates to investigate for this food. Maps use sourced location records; confirm the current menu, opening and booking directly. This list is not a tasting review or an award certification.

Won Halmeoni Bossam Main Branch

Wangsimni, Seoul

Exact current location is not verified here. Confirm the venue through its official information before planning a visit.

Cheonjitgol Sikdang

Seogwipo, Jeju

제주특별자치도 서귀포시 중앙로41번길 4 (서귀동)Checked 2026.08.09

Public-record location check, not a live opening-hours guarantee. Confirm with the restaurant before visiting.

Location source 1

Directions Naver Map

The fictional face of this dish

Water element · a face of soft curves

You gather clashing temperaments into one embrace and make them get along. The tavern queen's face, receiving every story that walks through the door.

Upright: Pork, kimchi, garlic, salted shrimp: one cabbage leaf embraces them all, different natures and all. Be that leaf today. Folding divided people into one wrap is the queen's work.

Reversed: You piled too much on one wrap. A wrap that cannot enter the mouth is greed, not embrace. Sort what to hold from what to set down; even a cabbage leaf tears.

The K-Roast take: Grandma's roast

Fictional food metaphors inspired by traditional face-reading, not measurements of your face or personality.

Those generous cheeks make people want to lean on you. Why does bossam star at feasts and on kimjang day? Because boiled pork, fiery kimchi, sharp garlic, and briny shrimp, all strangers to each other, reconcile on one cabbage leaf. Your cheeks are that leaf, child. Seat two enemies beside you and they end up talking. Start charging a mediator's fee.

Those eye corners droop kindly: eyes that wrap up other people's faults. The grandmother who drew crowds to a signless fifteen-pyeong shop in a 1975 Cheonggyecheon alley must have had that gaze. But kind eyes get used, too. Your skirt is wide, I grant you, yet wrap everything people hand you and there is no pork left for your own plate.

That chin is round and full: a table heaped high in your later years. Bossam is not a food for the hurried. Whoever cannot wait the hour of gentle boiling chews dry meat. Your luck is the slow-boiled kind as well: snatch at it young and you pull out only the underdone. Simmer on, child. Your pot is large.

Bossam pleases the eater only when the wrapper's hands are generous, and yours are those hands. But with the hands that wrapped for everyone else, wrap one for your own mouth now and then. Even the tavern queen must eat for the tavern to run.
Grandma's blessing

Table compatibility

Kimjang-day pork without makgeolli is labor, not a feast, while summer-only kongguksu and bossam miss each other from the very season they were born in.