Brent Young heads to Don Don, a Korean barbecue spot in NYC specializing in pork. Brent gets his hands dirty with chef Sungchul Shim and his team, learning about the Korean style of pig butchery and the restaurant's extensive dry-aging program. At the table, Brent starts with the banchan (side dishes), showcasing the blood sausage and pig head cheese. The barbecue tasting menu is a feast of pork hanger, jowl, and a generous sampling of dry-aged cuts of coppa, pork chop, and belly.
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00:00This is super exciting because you've had dry-aged steaks,
00:03you've had dry-aged burgers,
00:05you might have had a dry-aged pork chop.
00:07You're not getting dry-aged pork shoulder anywhere else.
00:10I've never seen this before.
00:12We're here at Don Don,
00:14a pork-centric Korean barbecue spot in midtown Manhattan.
00:18To me, Korean barbecue is the ultimate dining experience.
00:21Fun, traditional, unpretentious,
00:24and you get to drink with friends.
00:26Grandma, why are you making blood sausage again?
00:29Don Don is the passion project
00:31of Michelin-starred chef Sung Chul Shim.
00:34Here, Chef Sung and his team
00:36are reimagining Korean barbecue,
00:38combining their expertise of fine dining tasting menus
00:41with their extensive dry-aging program.
00:43They are expanding the boundaries
00:45of what Korean barbecue can be.
00:47Today, I'll be learning the Korean method of pig butchery,
00:50getting my hands dirty,
00:51and finding cuts of pork that even I didn't know existed.
00:55I've cut this muscle a thousand times
00:57and thrown it into sausage.
01:00I've never tried it on its own.
01:02We'll also be making Korean blood sausage
01:04and, of course, stuffing my face
01:06with as much meat as possible.
01:08We're making capicola.
01:09You're making capicola.
01:11There you go.
01:14I'm Brent, and this is Brent Meats World.
01:20The day begins by butchering a pig.
01:23During this breakdown,
01:24Chef isolates specific pork cuts,
01:27most of which you do not see in American-style butchery.
01:31Some cuts get designated to the traditional barbecue menu,
01:34some to the chef's special tasting menu,
01:36and some go to the in-house dry-aging program.
01:39So, this pork hanger, you have this on your menu?
01:42Yes, yeah, it's on our menu.
01:44Because all the pork belly we ordered,
01:46it has this part,
01:48so we save all this cut, we trim it,
01:51and then we let it dry, like, one or two days.
01:55Has a nice texture.
01:56So, this one has a kidney,
01:59so we're using this kidney for the blood sausage.
02:01Next, he's gonna trim the penderloin.
02:04Yep.
02:05And then we're using for the tasting menu.
02:07The major difference is that you're doing it by hand.
02:10Like, we've gotten everything hammered down,
02:13so it's just saw, saw, saw.
02:14We have a bandsaw.
02:15Throw it through the saw.
02:16We don't have a saw.
02:22Now, this is fun.
02:23At the meantime, we'll just take the shoulders off.
02:26Boston butt, picnic, that's it, done.
02:29Okay, pork chops, and then the belly turns into bacon.
02:32That's it.
02:33That's the American way.
02:34That's the American way, four cuts.
02:36So, I mean, you're going into far more detail than we are.
02:40This shoulder has a more fun way.
02:43We have a jowl, we have brisket, neck.
02:46Also, we have a shank part.
02:48The front shank, back hand, and the middle shank.
02:51All different cuts we utilize
02:53for the different cuts for barbecue.
02:55What's so fascinating about the Korean butcher style
02:58is that they isolate cuts that Americans often discard,
03:02something that we might toss into sausage
03:04they highlight on their tasting menu.
03:07This is how we break beef shoulders,
03:10but I've never done it on a pig.
03:12It makes a lot of sense to do this with a pig
03:14if you're trying to isolate this one muscle,
03:17which is ideal.
03:19It's the best muscle on the entire pig.
03:21Okay, so we need to portion this koba.
03:24For me, I mean, like,
03:25we're probably cutting steaks out of it,
03:29but, all right, no, you have a different approach.
03:31In a Korean typical barbecue setting,
03:34this is gold, this is not.
03:37Is this your favorite?
03:38This is everyone's favorite.
03:40Everyone's favorite.
03:40Everyone wants this, nobody really wants this.
03:43Are you kidding me?
03:44Just because of how we're preparing it.
03:49A defining feature of the Don Don experience
03:52is their carefully crafted dry aging process.
03:56Although dry aging pork is less common than beef,
03:59Don Don has centered their program
04:01around their most popular cut, pork belly.
04:04They often have 70 to 100 bellies dry aging
04:08at a single time.
04:09Why specifically are you so heavy on dry aging pork belly?
04:13Why is that the cut?
04:14Well, it sells, and people are looking for this.
04:17Do you think that the belly really does get
04:19that much better with dry age?
04:22It really locks in the flavor by drawing up the moisture,
04:25and you can really feel it in the meat.
04:27Today we'll be cutting this guy up
04:30and serving it to our guests.
04:32This is actually 30 day aged of the same loin.
04:37So these are the guys that we just dry aged
04:40and just pulled out, and this is a pork collar.
04:43This one has been inside for 21 days.
04:45This one tends to be meatier,
04:47so we like to do a full month for it.
04:49I feel like when people think of dry age,
04:51they're like, oh, it's huge umami, blue cheese,
04:54it's funky, like.
04:55We're not really going for that funk.
04:57It looks really beautiful inside
04:59because of the age, really, you can feel it in here.
05:02Bottom part here is actually part of the belly.
05:04This is just the pork loin.
05:06This is super exciting because you've had dry aged steaks,
05:09you've had dry aged burgers,
05:11you might have had a dry aged pork chop.
05:13You're not getting dry aged pork shoulder anywhere else.
05:16I've never seen this before.
05:18With most of the butchery now behind us,
05:20we start prepping the head cheese
05:22that will go towards the hot pot dish.
05:24Once the pig heads have been cooked,
05:26chef will then begin to shred them apart,
05:28separating the meat from the bones,
05:31the brains from the skull, the eyes from the socket,
05:34so on and so forth.
05:36Chef will then sort through everything,
05:39pulling out any unwanted cartilage or bone.
05:42Combine it into one pan
05:43so that it can set in a homogenized form.
05:46It cools overnight, gets portioned out, and ready to serve.
05:51All right, so this is all the ingredients
05:53that go inside the blood sausage.
05:56So we'll start with the ground pork.
05:58Great.
05:59Put in some pinches of salt, pepper.
06:01We're getting some ginger in there
06:02to kind of really get rid of that blood stench.
06:05Korean scallion.
06:07Jalapenos.
06:08Jalapenos, we like it spicy.
06:10Korean chives.
06:12Soybean paste.
06:14The Korean blood sausage tends to be a little more vegetal.
06:17Wow, this is a lot of stuff.
06:20Wow, this smells fantastic.
06:22I think blood can be off-putting to many people,
06:25but getting them over that hump of the idea that it's blood,
06:30you can do it with just a couple simple ingredients.
06:33Blood sausage isn't super popular in the United States.
06:37Why do you think it's popular everywhere else but here?
06:41I think it's just other cultures grew up eating it.
06:44Sure.
06:45Do you remember eating it as a kid?
06:47Oh, yeah?
06:48I do, I really do.
06:50It was very weird to me as a child.
06:51Uh-huh.
06:52But like good weird or bad weird?
06:54My grandma used to make this at home.
06:56Okay.
06:56And just looking at it, I was like,
06:57you know what, we don't want blood.
06:59I don't want to eat that.
07:00Grandma, why are you making blood sausage again?
07:03Yeah.
07:03So is this something you would actually eat every day?
07:05This is like a BLT.
07:067-Eleven in Korea has blood sausage.
07:08You're gonna stop by, grab a Gatorade,
07:10a couple beers, and a blood sausage?
07:12You can.
07:13Hell yeah.
07:14Yes.
07:15You'd be surprised what they sell at 7-Eleven in Korea.
07:18As I add 7-Eleven blood sausage
07:20to my must-try list for Korea,
07:22our focus shifts to casing this sausage,
07:25portioning it generously,
07:26because these are meant to be shared.
07:29So next step, an important step with any blood sausage,
07:32you gotta let it set up.
07:33So we're gonna poach it?
07:35Yep.
07:35And then for service?
07:36We will steam.
07:37Oh, okay, cool.
07:39So one of the very specific cuts that we took out
07:43from the whole pig today is this.
07:46This is just the hanger that comes out of half a pig.
07:50You'll be the lucky one to have it today.
07:52How do you run a restaurant with this?
07:54Well, that's why we have a tasting menu.
07:57There you go, there you go.
07:59I've cut this a thousand times,
08:01and never had it.
08:02I'm so excited.
08:03All right, so for our pork tasting tonight,
08:05we'll start with the pork belly,
08:07and then we'll move on into this pork loin
08:10that has the belly attached.
08:11Well, and then we'll start to move into
08:13the little fattier cuts, like the pork jowl,
08:15the last roll of the Iberico.
08:17We always like to have the pork collar towards the end,
08:20because that's what we believe to be the crème de crème
08:24of what we have to offer here.
08:26Do a little hanger,
08:27just to create like a textural difference
08:29between the fatty cuts,
08:31and then we'll always finish with the marinating.
08:33Kind of slowly getting more and more and more flavor.
08:36More and more flavor,
08:37and we'll introduce some different banchan here and there
08:41to really kind of complement everything together.
08:45So I'm excited.
08:46Let's eat.
08:47All right, let's do it.
08:48The unsung hero of Korean barbecue is the banchan,
08:51and at Don Don, it's exponentially better
08:53than your average Korean barbecue restaurant.
08:56This is where chef really flexes his Michelin star skill
09:00in the most humble way possible.
09:02All right, so I ordered the blood sausage
09:06and the hot pot with the head cheese.
09:09This is just the appetizer.
09:11We still have the whole pork tasting menu to come.
09:13So I'm gonna start with the blood sausage.
09:17That tastes like a garden.
09:18You really taste the jalapeno, the ginger,
09:22all the different vegetables.
09:23Very little blood taste for a blood sausage.
09:27That's freaking delicious.
09:28Super light.
09:29I could eat this whole thing.
09:31Best part about head cheese
09:32is you get a lot of different textures,
09:34and I love textures in my food.
09:37You get little crunchy bits, super porky,
09:40nice and gelatinous, and just delicious.
09:44Appetizers are over,
09:45so now it's time to start the pork tasting.
09:48All right, next we have the dry-aged pork koba.
09:51That is everything you could ever want
09:55a pork chop to be and more.
09:58It's tender, fatty, great texture to it.
10:02The whole thing is just, it's the perfect bite.
10:05So hanger's kind of known for its scarcity.
10:08There's only one on the animal.
10:10This is actually hanger slash skirt
10:14from the way that it's being butchered.
10:16I've never had it before,
10:18and I'm super excited to try it.
10:21Every day's a freaking school day.
10:23That's amazing.
10:24That actually does have the same consistency
10:27as a beef hanger steak.
10:30That's phenomenal.
10:32I said it before in the video,
10:33I've cut a hundred of these.
10:35I've never actually tried one.
10:37This is phenomenal and super underutilized.
10:42All right, jowls up.
10:43Never had a grilled pork jowl before.
10:45You're gonna find it shocking to believe
10:47that this fatty grilled pork is super delicious.
10:52We have our 30-day dry-aged pork belly,
10:55and we have our dry-aged pork loin as well.
10:59Onto the belly.
11:00Interesting.
11:01In order to get pork belly to have that texture,
11:03you have to cure it.
11:05Which means imparting salt and sugar
11:07onto the muscle for seven, 10 days.
11:11So most really good pork belly that you have
11:13is super salty and sweet.
11:15This doesn't have that,
11:16but because it's dry-aged,
11:18it has that bacon consistency.
11:20So we can throw banchan on top of it.
11:24We'll go shishito.
11:25All of the salt and all of the sweetness
11:29that you might get from bacon
11:31comes through with this grilled pickle.
11:34It's absolutely fantastic.
11:36On its own, I'd say, okay.
11:38It's good pork belly with the banchan.
11:4110 out of 10.
11:42Last but not least, our dry-aged pork chop.
11:45Tell you right now,
11:46this bite at the bottom of the loin
11:50where we're meeting our belly,
11:51that is my bite.
11:55That's what I always go to first.
11:57Again, the dry-aged really pays off.
12:01You're just getting super concentrated,
12:05delicious porky flavor.
12:08It's as simple as that.
12:09So here are my tips.
12:10When you come to Dan Dan Barbecue,
12:13try the thing you haven't had before.
12:15Trust the chefs.
12:16Do not skip out on the banchan.
12:19Ask your server, talk to the chef.
12:20Like, see what the different combinations are.
12:23Like, come with a bunch of friends.
12:25Eat as much as you can
12:26because all of the different things that we've tried
12:29have all been amazing.
12:30Don't skip on the beer and enjoy.
12:34Hey, everyone!