Gomtang (Slow-Simmered Ox Bone Beef Soup)
Quick answer
Gomtang is a Korean bone soup made by simmering beef leg bones and brisket in water for five to six hours or longer until the broth turns opaque and milky white.
What makes this special
- Gomtang provides a thick, milky white soup made by simmering beef leg bones for over five hours.
- 5 to 6 hours of simmering dissolves bone collagen and marrow into a milky white broth
- Discarding the first boiling water is the key step for a clean, odor-free white broth
Key ingredients
Core cooking flow
- 1 Soak 1 kg ox bones in cold water for 2 hours, changing water twice, then bla...
- 2 Place bones, 400 g brisket, 4 L water, 1 green onion stalk, garlic, and ging...
- 3 Simmer on medium-low for 5-6 hours. Add hot water to maintain level as needed.
Gomtang is a Korean bone soup made by simmering beef leg bones and brisket in water for five to six hours or longer until the broth turns opaque and milky white. The prolonged cooking extracts collagen, marrow, and fat from the bones, giving the liquid a creamy texture and a deep beefy flavor that needs only salt and black pepper to taste complete. Before the long simmer begins, the bones should be soaked in cold water for at least an hour to draw out the blood, then parboiled briefly in a fresh pot of water and rinsed clean so that the final broth comes out clear and free of off flavors. The brisket is removed partway through cooking, sliced thin against the grain, and arranged on top of the steaming soup for serving. Sliced green onion and a generous shake of black pepper cut cleanly through the richness of the milky broth. The most common way to eat gomtang is with a bowl of steamed rice submerged directly into the soup, letting the grains soak up all the flavor. This is slow food in the truest sense - the hours of effort yield a pot that can sustain a family across two meals - and it remains one of the dishes Koreans reach for instinctively when the cold sets in.
Instructions
Read the steps as a cooking flow: prep, heat, seasoning, doneness control, and finish.
- 1Heat
Soak 1 kg ox bones in cold water for 2 hours, changing water twice, then blanch in boiling water for 10 minutes to remove impurities.
- 2Control
Place bones, 400 g brisket, 4 L water, 1 green onion stalk, garlic, and ginger in a large pot; boil over high heat, skim foam, then reduce to medium-low.
- 3Control
Simmer on medium-low for 5-6 hours.
Add hot water to maintain level as needed. The broth will start turning milky white after about 2 hours.
- 4Prep
After 3 hours, remove the brisket, let it cool slightly, then slice thinly against the grain.
- 5Heat
Strain the broth through a sieve to remove fat; chilling it makes the solidified fat layer easy to remove.
Reheat and bring back to a milky white boil.
- 6Season
Place rice in a bowl and pour hot broth over it.
Top with sliced brisket and shredded green onion. Season with salt at the table.
After the steps
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Korean Ox Bone Soup (Milky Slow-Simmered Beef Bone Broth)
Seolleongtang is one of Korea's oldest and most enduring soups, produced by simmering ox leg bones and beef brisket together for six to eight hours until the broth turns a deep, opaque milky white. The bones are soaked in cold water for a minimum of two hours to purge as much blood as possible, then blanched in a separate pot and rinsed before the true simmering begins in fresh water. Over the course of a half-day at a steady, rolling boil, marrow and collagen break down and emulsify into the water, creating a broth with a heavy, almost creamy viscosity and a deep bovine savoriness that accumulates slowly and cannot be replicated with shortcuts. The brisket is removed after two hours, when it has turned tender and fully cooked, then sliced thin across the grain and returned to the bowl as a topping. The defining tradition of seolleongtang is that the broth arrives at the table completely unseasoned, and each person adds their own salt, white pepper, and sliced green onion to taste. This custom underscores the expectation that the broth itself should carry the bowl with its own richness. Steamed rice or thin wheat noodles are added directly to the soup and left to soak, absorbing the milky liquid until each grain or strand carries the flavor of the bone broth. In Korea, seolleongtang is eaten as a restorative meal after illness, as a morning hangover cure, and as a deeply satisfying cold-weather comfort food.
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