Guk (food)

Guk

Soegogi-mu-guk (beef and radish soup)
Alternative names	Tang
Type	Soup

Guk (국), also sometimes known as tang (탕; 湯), is a class of soup-like dishes in Korean cuisine. Guk and tang are commonly grouped together and regarded as the same type of dish, although tang can sometimes be less watery than guk. It is one of the most basic components in a Korean meal, along with bap (rice), and banchan (side dishes). In Korean table setting, guk is served on the right side of bap (rice), and left side of sujeo (a spoon and chopsticks).

Guk is a native Korean word, while tang is a Sino-Korean word that originally meant "boiling". Tang has been used as an honorific term in place of guk, when it denotes the same meaning as guk as in yeonpo-tang (octopus soup), daegu-tang (codfish soup), or jogae-tang (clam soup). Generally, the names of lighter soups with vegetables are suffixed with -guk, while heavier, thicker soups made with more solid ingredients used in jesa (ancestral rites) are often referred to as tang.Gamja-guk (potato soup) and gamja-tang (pork back-bone stew) are different dishes; the potato soup can be called gamjeo-tang.

Guk is largely categorized into four groups of soups, such as malgeun jangguk (맑은 장국), gomguk (곰국), tojangguk (토장국), and naengguk (냉국). Malgeun jangguk literally means "clear (malgeun, 맑은) soup (guk, 국) seasoned with a condiment (jang, 장)," such as doenjang (soy bean paste) or ganjang, and is served in a bansang (반상, regular meal table). The main ingredients for malgeun jangguk are meat, fish, vegetables, and seafoods. Gomguk, also called gomtang, refers to either a soup type made by boiling various beef parts such as rib, oxtail, brisket, head, and so forth for a long time, or made with ox bone by the same method. The broth of gomguk tends to have a milky color and to be rich and hearty taste. It can also be made with chicken or pork bone, to produce samgyetang or gamjatang.