Gom Gook - Oxtail Soup - (곰국)

Ever since I made the ggak ddoogi last week, I've been dying to enjoy it with some gom gook. I only make gom gook once or twice a year because I actually do not like the SMELL of it much. It consumes the whole house for days on end. =P



I went and bought about 2.5 lbs. of ox tails and 2.5 of sa-gul (cow bones with bone marrow). I ended up using half that bag of sa-gul and I'm going to use the remaining for PHO sometime next week.



Begin by washing and draining your bones and meat. I let it sit in cold water for about an hour and will change the water out every 15 minutes or so.



Then I bring it to a boil and when all this stuff starts rising to the top (about 15 minutes), I remove it...



..and rinse the bones and meat CLEAN.



Then place it back into the pot (I use a HUGE gom gook pot so I actually don't even have to add water in between) and fill it almost to the top with water and let it come to a strong boil. It took an hour for all that water to start boiling. After it's boiling, reduce the heat and let it boil softly for 2 hours.



Meanwhile I use my trusty teabags and stuff it with 2 small sprigs of ginger, 15-20 garlic cloves, and 1 spoonful of whole peppercorns.



I also washed and peeled about 1 lb. of moo (daikon radish) and 2 large onions.



After about 2 hours of boiling time, all the oil and fat from the meat starts to rise to the top...



...just skim the excess oil and discard it.



At this point, add all the vegetables pictured above. Let it boil for an additional 2 hours or so...



After 2 hours, remove ALL the vegetables. If you cook it any longer, it will start falling apart in the broth.



This step is optional. I like my broth to be WHITE, and in order to achieve that, I remove ALL the meat (after about 4-5 hours of boiling)...



I then preserve all the meat from the ox tails and all the tendons from the bones and place it into a smaller pot for easy access when serving.



I make sure the bones are clean and then add ONLY the bones back to the pot.



I cooked this overnight (and it's STILL cooking). Look at how white the broth is. It's been simmering for about 14 hours or so and I'm going to continue to do so until the broth is thick and milky.



However, it's still good enough to enjoy as is...so we had some this morning! I just add the meat and broth and top it off with green onions. Add salt to taste.

I'm going to let the broth cool and then skim some more fat off the top and will freeze plastic bags full of broth for other soups. Dduk ggook will be made using this broth for dinner! ENJOY~



The gom gook was perfect for the ggak ddoogi from the other day. BTW~ Now that it's fully fermented, the ggak ddoogi tastes fine. No need to add more salt. I'm going to remove my notes at the end of the recipe. =)