Sunday 14 June 2009

Dakbal: Chicken Feet



“Put enough spicy sauce on anything and it will taste good” I repeat to myself as I prepare for my first Dakbal moment. Slowly, I pick up one of the spindly chicken feet in front of me and, checking for toenails, prepare to put yet another alien object into my mouth (no jokes please, I’m aware of how that sounds.)


To be honest, Dakbal was an easier jump to make than the above paragraph lets on. First off, the feet were suffocated with a red hot sticky spicy sauce (I had a bit of a Lady Macbeth moment in the bathroom afterwards) so I knew hot would be the dominant sensation. Secondly, they looked like they had more meat on them than some of the odds and ends you find in a box of mediocre fried chicken, and last but not least, the toenails had been removed, something I usually insist on in a pre-dinner snack.


As for the eating of the things, that was a different story. I first attempted using chopsticks, but despite my ever-improving skills was unable to angle it sufficiently enough to get a bite in edgeways. Next I downed tools and plunged in fingers first, making a pass at the chicken feet head on. This time however my teeth barely scraped the skin and I ended up with a face full of hot sauce that reminded me of when I dressed up as the Joker at Halloween. Thankfully my next attempt proved more successful, and I was soon dismembering, biting and slurping my way through the whole batch.




Once in, most of what was going on had to do with the hot sauce they were covered in. It was like that crimson, sticky, slightly sweet lava you sometimes get at fried chicken places, with a fair number of chilli seeds and slices thrown in for good measure -REALLY hot! The meat meanwhile clung together in little pockets of goodness and was by in large, tender and easy on the way down, with some slightly crispy skin giving it a bit of extra character to boot.


At 1000 won for ten, you really can’t ask for much more.

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4 Comments:

Blogger ZenKimchi said...

I just wish that one day some ajosshi will get the idea to accompany Korean chicken feet with some blue cheese sauce.

15 June 2009 at 00:57  
Blogger Another HK Expat said...

Hrmmm you're on a real feet kick aren't you? I wonder what will be next...

15 June 2009 at 23:44  
Blogger Street Foodie said...

Yeah blue cheese sauce would be fantastic, and great foot pun Minerval! It's weird, before I came here I would have considered feet adventurous, but there's actually no difference between that and other parts of the animal when you think about it. I wonder if that's something that comes from being in Asia where you tend to see these things more often, or whether its just a changing attitude to food? I'm waiting until Beijing to really test my limits with the centipedes on sticks etc!

16 June 2009 at 20:56  
Blogger annamatic said...

As a kid i used to really object to eating chicken feet because they reminded me of baby hands. But I was ok with duck feet for some reason. However they do serve them without the bones too in Korea -- I like that.

17 June 2009 at 08:46  

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