"Can Chicken Take Center Stage in Korea's Grill Culture?"
This session turned the spotlight onto the wider range of ingredients that end up on the grill. When people think of Korean grilling, pork and beef usually come to mind first — but poultry and vegetables carry their own part of the tradition too, and here chicken took the lead in the conversation.
Two Korean heritage chicken breeds — Cheongni-dak and Jeju Gueom-dak — became the working material for research and discussion. The birds were grilled, simmered into stock, and tasted side by side, with Chef Park Sung-bae and Chef Cho Eun-hui of Onjium — a restaurant that studies Korean food culture — comparing cooking approaches and flavor in detail. Kim Jin-young, CEO of Green Labs, which sources ingredients from across the country and brings them to market, joined as a participant who had helped supply the material and shared candid views on this new subject at the center of the table. The skin on the back of the Jeju Gueom-dak, Kim noted, had a bite reminiscent of pork, with a rich umami on top. When the two Onjium chefs cooked stock from both breeds, the broth carried a distinct body and a deep savoriness — a point every participant nodded to as they tasted. To weigh how Korean-style grilled chicken might travel abroad, reference material on Japanese heritage chicken breeds was also shared, and the group traced the more established Japanese approaches to grilled chicken and the culture around them. The room came away agreeing that chicken deserves a fresh look as Hansik expands outward, and left with a list of questions and ideas worth carrying forward.
