Noodles · Season 8 · Season of Summer I

Chogye-guksu

Chogye-guksu (Chilled Vinegar Chicken Noodles) · 초계국수

Difficulty: Medium
Time to plan: 3–4 hr
Serves: 2 servings
Recipe: 5 steps
Listed places: 2

Food notes and context

This chogye guksu adds cooked chicken, vinegar and mustard to chilled broth with thin noodles. Cooking the chicken and cooling the stock safely are separate preparation tasks.

Compare the same chicken-broth idea with a hot dak-hanmari pot. Add mustard in small amounts rather than committing the whole bowl at once; a cold serving temperature still requires proper refrigerated handling.

Cook this version

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

Prep: 20 min
Cook: Chicken 40 min + noodles 4–5 min
Wait: Chill broth 2 hr
Ready in: 3–4 hr

Total includes chilling the broth. Verify 74°C/165°F in the thickest part of the chicken.

Ingredients (2 servings)

Ingredient	Amount	Substitute abroad
Whole chicken for boiling	Half a bird	2 chicken breasts
Thin wheat noodles (somyeon)	For 2	Buckwheat noodles
Cucumber and cabbage	Half and 2 leaves	Lettuce, pear
Vinegar	3 tbsp	Half lemon juice
Prepared mustard	1 tsp	A little wholegrain mustard
Scallion, garlic, peppercorns	For the broth	Bay leaves
Salt and sugar	To season	Plum syrup

Step by step

1.Boil the chicken
Simmer the chicken about 40 minutes with scallion, garlic, and peppercorns. Verify 74°C/165°F in the thickest part, then lift it out.
2.Chill and skim
Strain and cool the broth promptly, refrigerate it within 2 hours, chill for about 2 hours, and lift off the solidified fat.
3.Tear and julienne
Hand-tear the cooled chicken along the grain; julienne cucumber and cabbage.
4.Season the broth
Whisk vinegar, mustard, salt, and sugar into the cold broth until brightly tart.
5.Assemble
Boil the noodles for 4–5 minutes and rinse thoroughly in cold water. Pour over the cold broth and top with chicken and vegetables; a few ice cubes are summer's courtesy.

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.

Pyeongraeok

Euljiro, Seoul

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

Paldang Chogye-guksu

Paldang, Namyangju, Gyeonggi

경기도 남양주시 와부읍 다산로 43, 팔당초계국수 1층 일부호Checked 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

Metal element · an angular, solid face

You alone stay cool in the middle of the heat wave. A face like chogye-guksu, flipping the hottest season upside down with cold.

Upright: While others beat summer with heat, chogye wins by chilling the chicken. No problem has only one answer. Flip today's problem over and solve it cold.

Reversed: Too much vinegar and mustard turns noodles into a punishment. Your stinging wit has been crossing the line lately. Sourness only as far as it opens the appetite: that is chogye's unit of measure.

The K-Roast take: Grandma's roast

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

Those eyes are coolly aloof, shaded even in the dog days. That is this dish. When all of Joseon fought summer with boiling chicken soup, the palace and the north chilled the broth instead and struck it with vinegar and mustard. Finding answers on the opposite side of everyone's road is your constitution, child. They will call you contrary, but your seat is on that other side.

That straight nose bows to no trend. It is the secret of chogye's hundred-year survival: when sourness was fashionable it did not chase more sourness, it held its center of savory chicken broth and laid the tang on top. Sourness without a center is one season's fad; sourness with a center becomes a hundred-year menu. Write down tonight what your center is.

Wit hangs sharp on that mouth: a mustard mouth. But chogye's mustard is not there to stab the nose; its job is drawing one warm line through a cold broth. Use your wit the same way. Not to freeze the room, but to draw one line of warmth through a frozen one. Then your one remark becomes the mustard of the gathering.

Chogye is the dish that never begrudges the labor of cooling what was heated. Boiling, chilling, skimming: that fuss is what makes summer dignified. The fussy procedures of your life are also the price of dignity, so stop grumbling that there is no shortcut.
Grandma's blessing

Table compatibility

Tart cold broth with a hot, nutty potato pancake is a summer duo calculated down to the temperature, while with boiling yukgaejang it shares a table only to argue: their religions of beating summer are simply different.