Dongji Patjuk: The Red Bean Porridge Koreans Eat on the Winter Solstice

There is one kind of patjuk I especially like: Dongji patjuk with small dumplings.

Patjuk is Korean red bean porridge, and Dongji is the winter solstice—the shortest day and longest night of the year. The dish has a long seasonal meaning in Korea, but my reason for enjoying it is simple. I like the small dumplings, I like the porridge as it is without adding sugar or salt, and I like eating it with kimchi.

For me, it is also the kind of food that goes down easily. I can eat several bowls without feeling too full. That is only my personal experience, not a claim about how everyone will feel.

Dongji patjuk with chewy white saealsim and kimchi, a winter-solstice meal that remains part of Korean food culture. AI-generated illustration for K-Food Monster.

Why Koreans Eat Patjuk on Dongji

The connection between red bean porridge and Dongji is more than a matter of cold-weather appetite. According to VisitKorea’s introduction to patjuk, Koreans traditionally ate it on the winter solstice because red was believed to ward off evil spirits.

That was a folk belief, not a statement about the physical powers of red beans. Still, it gave the porridge a protective meaning. The year’s longest night became an occasion for a red dish associated with pushing away misfortune.

Dongji was also called “Little New Year.” An old saying even connected eating a bowl of patjuk with growing one year older. For someone encountering the custom for the first time, Dongji patjuk can be understood as both food and seasonal symbol: an ordinary bowl carrying an old hope for safety.

The Small Dumplings in the Bowl

The part I particularly like is the small dumplings.

Their standard Korean name is saealsim (새알심). They are traditionally made from glutinous rice flour and shaped into little balls before being cooked with the porridge. The name comes from their resemblance to small bird eggs. Korea.net describes saealsim as rice dough balls often added to Dongji patjuk.

Some people know them as ongsimi (옹심이). The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture identifies ongsimi as a dialect word for saealsim. Today, the word ongsimi is also strongly associated with Gangwon’s potato dumplings, so saealsim is the clearest term to use when introducing the rice-cake balls in patjuk.

Whatever word is used, these are the small dumplings I mean when I say Dongji patjuk is special to me.

Sugar, Salt, or Nothing?

Patjuk quickly creates a familiar Korean food question: Do you add sugar, add salt, or leave it alone?

I have heard the choice explained as a regional difference. There may be broad local tendencies, but a rigid map—one region for sugar and another for salt—makes the custom sound more fixed than it is. Preferences can change from place to place, household to household, and person to person.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture’s Dongji patjuk entry gives salt as part of the preparation and notes that some people add sugar according to taste. One preference does not have to become the correct way for everyone.

Personally, I like my patjuk plain. I do not add extra sugar or salt at the table. That is simply how it tastes right to me.

Why I Want Kimchi Beside It

Plain patjuk does not mean I want the bowl by itself. I like it with kimchi.

That pairing is what makes me think of Dongji. Patjuk with kimchi feels complete to me without requiring an elaborate setting. It is simply the way I want to eat the meal. Cold dongchimi, or radish-water kimchi, is also a classic companion to hot patjuk, but the kimchi I imagine does not need to be one particular kind.

I also find patjuk easy to digest. I can have several bowls and still not feel too full. Again, that is my own response rather than a universal benefit. Someone else may experience it differently. For me, however, plain patjuk, small dumplings, and kimchi make a combination I can happily continue eating.

Patjuk Is Bigger Than One Day

Dongji is the main symbolic occasion for this porridge, but patjuk has never belonged only to the winter solstice.

The same Korean encyclopedia records it as a winter meal or snack and notes other occasions when red bean porridge was made or shared. It was even sold at taverns and along well-traveled roads as an everyday way to satisfy hunger. That history helps explain why patjuk and Dongji patjuk overlap without being identical. The porridge can be eaten at other times; Dongji gives one version its strongest seasonal meaning.

Even Dongji customs were not identical everywhere. When Dongji fell early in the eleventh lunar month—a time called Aedongji—some traditions served red-bean rice cake instead of the usual porridge, particularly for children.

For readers outside Korea, this distinction is useful. Eating patjuk on an ordinary day does not make it less authentic. Dongji is the tradition’s focal point, not the only permission to enjoy the dish.

Does Korea Still Keep the Tradition?

This is the question I keep returning to: Do people in Korea still continue the Dongji patjuk tradition?

In the older custom, people did more than eat the porridge. They sprinkled it near gates, doors, rooms, storage jars, or other parts of a home as a rite intended to keep harmful spirits and bad fortune away.

That sprinkling ritual is now uncommon. Yet Korea.net reports that although the old rite is rarely practiced today, patjuk remains a popular Dongji food. Public cultural events also continue to present the porridge and saealsim as part of the occasion.

Tradition does not always survive by remaining unchanged. Sometimes the rite becomes rare while the dish stays. A bowl once connected with household protection can continue as seasonal food, cultural memory, or simply something people enjoy when Dongji arrives.

My own wish remains uncomplicated: Dongji patjuk with small dumplings, left plain, with kimchi beside it—and enough for several bowls.

How do you like your patjuk: with sugar, with salt, or plain? And does a bowl of it still make you think of Dongji?