Soups & Stews · Queen of Ladles · Queen of Ladles

Chueotang

Chueotang (Loach Soup) · 추어탕

Difficulty: Hard
Time to plan: 120 min
Serves: 3 servings
Recipe: 5 steps
Listed places: 2

Food notes and context

This chueotang uses prepared loach, cooked dried greens, soybean paste and perilla-seed powder. Ground versus whole loach is a detail to establish from the actual recipe or menu.

If aromatic pepper is supplied separately, add a little to part of the soup first. Choose by fish, greens and seasoning rather than treating a “restorative food” description as evidence of medical benefit.

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
Loach fish (cleaned)	500 g	Frozen ground loach from Korean grocers; catfish meat
Boiled dried radish greens	2 handfuls	Cabbage leaves or blanched kale
Doenjang and gochujang	2 tbsp doenjang, 1 tbsp gochujang	Korean grocers online
Perilla seed powder	2 tbsp	Korean grocers online
Scallion, garlic, ginger	As needed	Anywhere
Green chili	2	Serrano
Sancho (chopi) pepper powder	A pinch at the table	Chueotang without sancho is unfinished; Korean grocers
Coarse salt	For purging	For cleaning the loach

Step by step

1.Purge and clean the loach
Sprinkle live loach with coarse salt to purge, then wash clean. With frozen ground loach, skip this step.
2.Boil soft
Boil the loach with ginger for thirty minutes or more, until even the bones go soft.
3.Grind and strain
Grind the boiled loach with its broth and press it through a sieve to catch the fine bones.
4.Boil with the greens
Dissolve the doenjang and gochujang in the strained broth, add the radish greens, and simmer thirty minutes. Add the garlic and perilla powder.
5.Sancho and serve
Add the scallion and chili, bring to one more boil, and serve. At the table, finish each bowl with a pinch of sancho.

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.

Saejip Chueotang

Namwon, North Jeolla

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

Namwon Chueo Street

Namwon, North Jeolla (near Gwanghallu)

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

The fictional face of this dish

Water element · a face of soft curves

You grind every ingredient down and hold it formless inside you. The wise innkeeper's face that has restored the household's strength every autumn when the paddies drain.

Upright: Refill what summer drained out of you today. Like devotion ground in without a trace, the quiet ways you have tended yourself become strength now.

Reversed: Your life is missing its sancho, like a bowl without the pepper. Stop tending only the body; add a pinch of joy to the heart as well.

The K-Roast take: Grandma's roast

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

That forehead is full: an intuitive face. Do you know why chueotang is called the soup of wisdom? For the family who could not stomach whole loach, someone ground it bone and all until no shape remained: an invention of consideration. Your mind works that way. You do not argue people out of their reluctance; you remove the reason for it. That is the innkeeper's wisdom.

Those eyes are narrow and long: an observer's face. Knowing when the loach runs fattest is observation too: when the paddies drain before the rice harvest, and the one who knows that tide gets the soup. Your eyes read that tide. Recognizing the ripest moment in people and chances alike, that is a fortune few are born with.

That philtrum is long: an unhurried face. Chueotang cannot be rushed: boil, grind, strain, add the greens, boil again, half a day's procedure. Your devotion follows that procedure. Instant work bores you, and the more a task demands of the hands, the more your skill comes alive.

No shape remains, yet everything is in the broth: that is chueotang. The years and care you ground in are not gone just because they are invisible. The people who seek your soup every autumn are the proof, so linger long, like the scent of sancho.
Grandma's blessing

Table compatibility

A tingling pinch of sancho is the destined match that wakes your nuttiness. With oily fried chicken your philosophies of restoration differ, and sharing a table embarrasses you both. The restorative table belongs to you.