1. Ingredients for Gejang
- Primary ingredients: Crabs (blue crabs, rock crabs, mitten crabs, etc.)
- Secondary ingredients: Soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, etc.
2. Taste evaluation
-Spicy: ☆☆☆☆☆
-Salty: ★★★☆☆
-Sweet: ★☆☆☆☆
-Sour: ☆☆☆☆☆
3. Introduction to Gejang (Marinated crab)
Gejang refers to live crab pickled in a brine of soy sauce, gingered garlic. The taste and texture is quite unique because the live crabs are marinated in salty soy sauce without using fire.
You’d think it will be smelly to eat live crab but it is a very delicious Korean traditional food that people mouth water even when they just think about it.
Gejang has been a popular dish from 400 years ago, Joseon Dynasty era.
Its historical stories are documented along with recipes and ways to grow crabs.
It’s assumed that Gejang does not go bad for a long time and is not smelly even when it’s cooked without using fire because of our ancestors’ hard work and their recordings on the recipes.
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Gejang is made with crabs filled with flesh and orange eggs. Crabs do not have disgusting smell only when they’re live and fresh.
Plus, they are marinated in salty soy sauce or just salt, which is good for sterilization and antibacterial effect so they are safe to eat.
Cleaned crabs are marinated in cooled sauce made of boiled soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger after boiling the sauce, and they are left to age. In the process, seasoned soy sauce needs to be added three to four times after boiling it to keep the crabs from decomposing. It takes a lot of work and effort to keep it safe to eat and keep its original scent and taste at the same time.
This unique recipe leads to unique taste.
First of all, the first taste is salty because of soy sauce, which s black.
But inside the crab, the flesh is properly salted and soft and tasty.
You can feel the taste of crab, and the more aged the better it tastes.
Gejang is usually called ‘Bab-doduk(rice thief)’ in Korea.
Koreans eat grains like rice or barley along with a few side dishes.
Bab-doduk refers to something that stimulates your appetite that makes your rice disappear before you notice it.
Which means, Gejang is very delicious dish you could have a few bowls of rice with just one dish of Gejang. You should try how many bowls of rice you can finish with this side dish.
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4. Kinds of Gejang
Depending on each region and kinds of crabs caught in each region, there are Dol-gejang, Cham-gejang and Ggot-gejang.
There used to be only one kind called Ganjang-gejang(soy sauce) aged in soy sauce but there has been ‘Yangnyeom-gejang’ marinated with spicy sauce since the 1950s.
There are two popular Gejang in Korea, Ganjang-gejang and Yangnyeom-gejang.
Ganjang-gejang: Crabs marinated in seasoning sauce made of soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger
Yangnyeom-gejang: Crabs mixed with seasoning sauce of chili powder, soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger that are intended to be eaten soon after they’re cooked. Have spicy taste and soft flesh.
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5. How to enjoy Gejang even more
Gejang is quite salty so you’d better eat it with rice.
And if you do, it would be better to eat it with white rice that’s just cooked.
First of all, you should squeeze the crab’s flesh out with your hands, not a fork or chopsticks, and eat it right away.
If it’s too salty for you, you should get the flesh out and eat it with a spoon of rice.
Flesh is not the only best bit.
Black soy sauce fermented for a long time with crabs is very tasty and the intestines and eggs taste different from the flesh.
It is very tasty to eat rice with intestines and sauce on a crab shell.
You’ll find it attractive to eat rice mixed with the sauce and intestines on the crab shell.
Hold the crab with your hands and suck the flesh out of it! And put some of flesh on the rice! Or mix it with rice on a crab shell!
That’s how Koreans eat Gejang.
Once you taste the rice mixed with the sauce on a crab shell, you’ll find yourself wanting more rice.
When you notice there are more empty bowls of rice on the table and think ‘Oh no, who ate all of this?’ you’ve succeeded experiencing what Bab-doduk means.
