The Pot That Never Gets Emptied
2025, November 21st
At Pyeongando Jokbal-jip, every day's pot of jokbal starts with what's left of the day before. That broth has been carried forward for decades, which makes it one of the oldest things on the street.
The recipe sounds almost too simple. Pig's feet, soy sauce, ginger, scallion and onion. No medicinal herbs, no coffee, none of the tricks newer shops use. Lee Kyung-soon, who started working here in its early years, once said that if the meat is good, nothing else is needed.
The secret is what stays in the pot. Each morning, water and fresh ingredients go in on top of the previous day's leftover broth. Back in 2016, Lee said the broth had been going for more than forty years. Every batch carries a little of every batch before it, all the way back to the 1960s, when this pancake house first started boiling pig's feet because customers asked for something new.
She had other rules, too. Boil on high heat the whole time, so the skin stays chewy and the smell cooks off. Eat the front legs cold and the back legs warm. At the busiest times, she remembered cutting more than a hundred trotters in a single day.
Most recipes can be written down. This one can't, because part of it is yesterday's pot. If the shop ever closed and the broth were poured out, no one could make it again exactly. In a neighborhood where buildings, signs and owners keep changing, this pot is a small, stubborn piece of continuity.