Have you heard of the Korean dish called Jjukkumi (์ญ๊พธ๋ฏธ) ? Spicy stir-fried octopus in English. Webfoot octopus cooked together with special sauce, a mouth watering delicious combination.
Spicy seafood
Generally, it is known for being a spicy seafood dish. However, the word spicy can be subjective. It can be spicy to certain people and just fine for some people. This also depends on how spicy the restaurant prepares it. If you’re a fan of spicy food in general, or in this case, spicy seafood, you’re up for a good meal.
A little fun fact, the peak season for octopus in South Korea is during winter. This is when restaurants that serve this dish stock up on octopus enough to use for the upcoming year.
Recommended restaurants?
You can get this dish almost everywhere in Korea. In this particular post however, I will introduce a restaurant that is well known for their spicy stir fried octopus. This restaurant is located near the Konkuk University. It is called ‘Jjukkumi King’.
Details of the restaurant:
- Address: 39 Neungdong-ro 13-gil, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul.
- Phone number: 02-462-7191
You can type in the address on Naver Map or Kakao Map and it will lead you straight to the place. Or, you can also type in ‘์ญ๊พธ๋ฏธํน’ if you know Korean.
Two types of jjukkumi serving:ย At restaurants, there are usually two types of servings.
- Served right away on plate
- Served on an iron plate and is fried in front of you
How do you eat it?
First of all, I would like to add that every restaurant has their own meal sets that come together with the main stir fried octopus dish.
Korean food in general always has side dishes or banchan (๋ฐ์ฐฌ) that you eat together with the main meal. In the case of the Jjukkumi king restaurant, we had our main dishes stir fried octopus, another stir fried octopus but with cheese added and potato pizza, salad, rice ball orย jumokbab (์ฃผ๋จน๋ฐฅ) in Korean and a soup that came together with the set. (refer to photo above) You can also choose to add on pork or specifically in Korean,ย Samgyeopsalย (์ผ๊ฒน์ด) that will be fried together with the Jjukkumi. So muslim or kosher eaters, be sure to avoid accidentally ordering the add on samgyeopsal. Just order the normal classic Jjukkumi.
Now let’s get into how you actually eat it. You might be thinking, there’s a special way to eat it? Shouldn’t just eating it together with rice be okay?
Well, you can eat it just as it is with rice if you want to. However, if you look closely also at the picture first picture in this post of the complete meal, you will notice that there are variety of vegetables set on the table. Let’s see how you can make the best out of your Jjukkumi eating experience. It’s really simple.
Basically what you do is, you put a small portion of the stir fried octopus together with the rice ball,ย bean sprouts, and radish on the perilla leaf. You wrap the perilla leaf around the added vegetables and octopus, shape it into a ball to an appropriate size enough for you to eat. The combination is out of this world. It is insanely delicious. If you’re someone you can’t stand spicy food, this will help reduce the spiciness. Besides that, ordering the jjukkumi with cheese too, helps reduce the spiciness.
This JJukkumi Kingย restaurant also offers free ice cream after your meal!
This dish is easily one of my favourite Korean dish. If you go to Korea, do yourself a favour and try this dish out.
