Korean Job Discussion Forums

[AbbeFaria]

I went out to a staff lunch this week and we went to this place that served chicken. It smelled pretty good but before I could eat it, the adjumma put down these little glass bowls with a raw egg in each of them. I was then told that before I could eat the chicken I had to swallow the egg (it might have been floating in sesame oil, I'm not sure about that part) or I would get a very bad rash on my skin. Apparently the chicken is cooked in some kind of tree parts. If it's leaves, roots, some woodchips, I don't know, but if the definition they showed me in the dictionairy is true, it might be poisonous.

I'll never know if it would have given me a rash or not as I would not eat the raw egg, despite the prodding of all my coworkers. Instead I was fed a bowl of dwen-jang gee-gae and some pah-jong that worked on the hunger pretty well. I want to know if any of you know what this is and if it's true. I can't remember the name of the stuff, but I'm sure with the collective Korean knowledge on this board someone knows and can fill me in.

Did you really knock back a raw egg to eat this chicken? And if so, do you really need to?

-S-

[seirogan]

it is called 옻닭 (otdak) lacquer chicken. Made from the lacquer tree which is in the same family as poison ivy and poison oak.