#17. 사골 -- Beating a dead cow

A friend of mine took me out to a very nice fusion restaurant this past weekend. While looking through the menu, I was a bit grossed out by an item called "roasted bone marrow." Even though I'm Korean by birth, I have never been an adventurous eater, so I flat-out refused to try it.

I later talked to my mom on the phone about the strange things that people eat these days, and she looked at me strangely, and told me that one of my favourite Korean dishes is also made from ox bones (which made me instantly regret my decision to not get the roasted bone marrow.)

The dish in question, of course, is what the English speakers call "oxtail soup," or sometimes "ox bone soup." In Korean, it is called "사골국." You may be more familiar with similar dishes such as "설렁탕" or "곰탕" instead -- depending on the ratio of bones to meat that goes into this dish, they go by different names. "사골국" is mostly bones, and "곰탕" is mostly meat.

The way to make these hearty soups is very simple. You put ox bones (usually leg bones are used, this is why we call the soup "사골," or "four bones." "사" is "four," and "골" means "bones." For example, "해골" means "skull," and "골다공증" means "osteoporosis.") and some meat into a huge pot along with water, then you let simmer for several hours. Eventually, you are left with milky broth that is pure deliciousness. This process of slowly extracting broth is called "우려내다" in Korean, meaning "to simmer and extract flavour."

The really interesting feature of 사골국 is that when you're almost finished with the broth, you can pour more water into the pot, boil a while longer, and repeat the process several times to get a large quantity of delicious soup!

And this idea of using the same ingredient to make more and more of the soup gave rise to a new internet expression. Suppose that a comedy sketch keeps trying to get laughs out of the same joke for weeks, with just slight variations. At some point, you get fed up with their gimmicks, and you might exclaim in Korean,

 우려먹기가 너무 심한거 아냐? (Aren't you simmering for flavour far too much?)

농담으로 사골국 끓여먹냐? (Are you planning to make a 사골국 with that joke?)

Both of these expressions make comparison of the fact that a joke is used over and over again (just like the bones and meat in 사골국) to try to get laughter out of people (just like how we keep trying to get some flavour out of the bones and meat).

These expressions get used a lot in the evaluation of creative content, when the same topics keep coming up. They also get used when a broadcasting company keeps airing re-runs of the same episodes. When you're fed up with the same thing happening over and over again, these expressions are probably appropriate to try out.

Perhaps it is a bit of a 무리수 to say this, but I can't help but notice some similarities to an English expression, "beating a dead horse," in that there is a repetitive action being done to a dead animal (of course, I the context is different!) But it always amazes me to see any kinds of similarities between two completely unrelated cultures. It's as if the amount of understanding that humans share without needing the use of languages is actually quite a lot.