Sunbe-tang

A refined herbal broth with ginseng, jujube, and tender chicken — a quieter, more herb-forward variation on the samgyetang tradition.

Sunbe-tang occupies a quieter corner of Korea's tonic soup tradition — less famous than samgyetang but beloved in herbal medicine circles and in the Gyeonggi Province region where it is traditionally prepared. The soup foregoes the rice-stuffed whole chicken of samgyetang in favour of free-range chicken pieces simmered for an extended period with Korean ginseng roots, dried jujubes, goji berries, Solomon's seal root (둥굴레), and hwanggi (astragalus root). The result is a broth with a sweet, herbal complexity that is less aggressively ginseng-forward than standard samgyetang, more nuanced and rounded — the kind of soup that Korean mothers and grandmothers cook for family members recovering from illness or exhaustion. The herbal combination is drawn directly from traditional Korean medicine's tonic formulations, and each ingredient is selected for its specific restorative property: jujube warms and nourishes blood, ginseng boosts vital energy, goji berries protect the liver. Sunbe-tang is typically served without noodles or rice inside the pot, keeping the broth pure, and is accompanied by rice separately so as not to dilute the carefully constructed herbal flavour.