Daechang-bokkeum (Spicy Pork Large Intestine Stir-Fry)

Daechang-bokkeum lives or dies before the sauce touches the pan. Wet intestine boils. Dry intestine browns. If you remember only that, you will be ahead of many loud night restaurants that hide a puddle of grease under a red sauce.

In many restaurants daechang means beef large intestine, so say it clearly at the market for this version: dwaeji-daechang (pork large intestine), cleaned but not stripped bare. It is a drinking dish, anju, the kind brought to a small table with rice on one side and something sharp and cold on the other. I keep dishes like this in the same notebooks as holiday food. Street tables have lineage too.

Tonight it asks for patience first: salt, flour, and rinsing; then a simmer with doenjang (fermented soybean paste), soju, garlic, and ginger; then a hard stir-fry. The safe corner to cut is buying well-cleaned intestine from a butcher you trust. The corner you cannot cut is drying and rendering. Gochujang is not a blanket. Use enough for body, then let the browned fat, cabbage, chilies, garlic, and perilla leaves speak.

Notebook 31 says dry twice, once after the pot and once before the pan. That small instruction is the difference between glossy and greasy. 손맛 is real; I measure it anyway, so the next cook doesn't have to guess.