1 day Ago By [email protected](KoreaTimes)
Agriculture Minister Song Mi-ryung, center, poses with rice syrup master Cho Seong-ae, left, and brown rice vinegar master Han Sang-jun after appointing them as the country's new Korea Grand Masters at the ministry's office in Sejong, Monday. Yonhap Agriculture ministry designates 93rd, 94th masters By Ko Dong-hwan The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has named new Korea Grand Masters, recognizing those who have been preserving the country’s oldest methods of making traditional food, liquors or sauces. The newly inducted masters are Cho Seong-ae, 65, a rice syrup maker from Damyang County, South Jeolla Province, and Han Sang-jun, 55, who has been making brown rice vinegar in Yecheon County, North Gyeongsang Province.
The recipes and equipment they use match records from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), according to the ministry. Cho, the 93rd Korea Grand Master, has maintained a cooking method from a book of household-managing tips for women written in 1809. The record says that rice syrup should be made by “ceaselessly stirring a clear extract while slowly simmering it in a wrought-iron cauldron.
” The ministry said Cho has been “restoring the original recipe almost perfectly.” Cho once opted to replace the traditional cauldron with a machine to prioritize automation over tradition. She made the decision because keeping the temperature even using a cauldron was difficult.
But she later went back to her old ways because she learned that using the machine cannot recreate the original taste of rice syrup. Cho is the third generation of her family to preserve the cooking method since her grandmother-in-law. She and her spouse have been selling rice syrup products for more than 20 years.
Han has been making rice yeast, mixing it with steamed rice and fermenting the mixture to produce vinegar, using traditional methods recorded in three separate books, all written between 1766 and 1843. He has mastered the skill of maintaining the exact levels of moisture and fineness of ground rice when making rice yeast. The ministry noted Han’s ability to achieve precision despite the lack of detailed measurements in the archaic books, which could have made achieving optimal quality easier.
The craftsmanship, it added, makes his cooking method worth preserving. Han’s family has been preserving the tradition since his grandmother. His small-sized company, established in 2006, has registered impressive sales of more than 1 billion won ($680,000) every year, 20 percent of which is from the sales of vinegar, according to the ministry.
“Traditional food contains our ancestors’ knowledge, which is our proud cultural heritage,” Agriculture Minister Song Mi-ryung said on Monday when she bestowed Korea Grand Master titles to Cho and Han in Sejong. “We would like to see our culinary heritage and food culture spread worldwide.” The ministry has been designating Korea Grand Masters since 1994.
The selection is based on the evaluation of applications of candidates in six categories such as traditional depth, experience and reason for preservation. This year, the ministry selected Cho and Han out of 25 candidates. There are currently 81 active Korea Grand Masters.
Of the 99 total Korea Grand Masters named, 17 have died, and one declined the title. There are 24 liquor masters, with 13 sauce masters, 10 rice cake and dessert masters and five kimchi masters..
