Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hindsight]

When I buy an uncooked chicken in the store it includes the neck and tail, but no giblets: no chicken liver, no heart, no gizzards. This is upsetting, especially since it limits my ability to make chicken gravy.

I have looked in every supermarket and butcher shop and have not been able to find any chicken livers or chicken hearts. For that matter, I have not seen any beef liver or even pork liver.

I happen to like chicken livers, especially in chopped chicken liver, but also sauteed with onions and cooked into scrambled eggs.

Why aren't there any chicken livers for sale in Korea?

I find this puzzling given that when I order fried chicken or barbecued chicken at a restaurant they serve virtually every piece of bone in the chicken as though it were each a delicacy. So Koreans apparently don't believe in wasting food.

And there was a time in the 20th century when many Koreans were starving. Did they refuse to eat liver and hearts and other organ meats even while people were dying for lack of food?

Plenty of cultures have made all sorts of delicious food out of organ meats, including liverwurst and pate. Yet I cannot find any food that has liver as an ingredient. There is not even any cat food with liver in it; it is mainly tuna or mackerel.

Where does all the liver go?

Have Koreans managed to breed chickens without livers or hearts?

[D.D.]

Koreans actually have livers from chickens put in their bodies close to their liver so they can drink more soju and win drinking contests with foreigners.

They use the parts from the hearts to connect the chicken livers in a loop to their own liver.

It is a secret and sensitive issue so don't ask them about it.

If you watch closely you can see their heads move a bit like a chickens when they walk.

[Straphanger]

OP, I hope you don't feel too small after that rant. Liver is 간. You have to ask for it. Chicken is 닭. Beef is 소. Pork is 돼지. Betcha right now I could go down to my meat guy here in Lake Wobegon and ask for 소간 (Cow Liver) and walk out with some. I imagine chicken liver is a little more tricky - the only guy here that carries chickens is all the way across the street, and he doesn't have a kid in my hakwon!! O_O

[aussieb]

They don't waste much, do they? I was served a plate of fried chicken bits once in Incheon and thought that it was fried gizzards because of the really chewy texture. All my host would say was "It is very good for you" I found out later that it was a plate of chicken sphincters! Waste not .. want not.

[Bondrock]

the chicken man told me there was some kind of health scare a few years back and chicken livers caused some kind of illness so the government made it illegal to sell them. However, if you go to a street market you can easily buy them. you can buy them uncooked in big bags or else buy them deep fried and served on a stick...

Beef liver is usually served raw in restaurants here as a delicacy... pork liver... you need to ask a butcher...never saw it in the big department stores...

all offal is available if you go to a meat shop... but the chicken livers have to be sold "under the counter"....

[Morgen]

I know they're not shy about eating liver, as I've had a plate of lung sausage and liver (always in that combination) offered to me several times. I don't know what animal it was from though; they lost me at "lung sausage and liver."

[Beeyee]

[Underwaterbob]

[roadwork]

[Hindsight]

Bondrock wrote:

[Straphanger]