Samgyetang Season Is Here: Here's How Much It Costs to Make It at Home in 2025

With Chobok less than a week away, Koreans are already thinking about samgyetang, the ginseng chicken soup that's essentially the country's official answer to summer heat. This year, making a bowl at home from ingredients bought at a traditional market will cost roughly 8,815 won (about $5.80) per serving, according to market price research institute Korean Price Information.

That's 2.8 percent cheaper than last year's 36,230 won total (for a batch that works out to four servings), and the main reason is sticky rice, or chapssal, which dropped 23.3 percent in price from a year earlier. The institute surveyed seven key ingredients, small whole chicken, ginseng, chapssal, garlic, chestnuts, green onions, and medicinal herbs for the broth, and found that while chapssal costs fell significantly, prices for the other components held steady.

Samgyetang is traditionally eaten on each of Korea's three hottest calendar days: Chobok, Jungbok, and Malbok. The logic is a kind of heat-fighting-heat philosophy, warming, nourishing food to help the body cope with extreme summer temperatures. For many Korean families, skipping it on those days would feel genuinely strange.

Restaurant prices tell a different story than the market data, though. According to the Korea Consumer Agency's price data portal, the average bowl of samgyetang at a Seoul restaurant cost 18,154 won in May, up 2.8 percent from 17,654 won the previous year. That's more than double the homemade cost, even as ingredient prices have come down.

The gap is largely driven by rising fixed costs for restaurant operators: rent and labor expenses have continued to climb, pushing dining-out prices upward regardless of what's happening at the market level. It's a tension that shows up across Korean restaurant categories, but samgyetang, a dish that requires a whole chicken, several specialty ingredients, and significant prep time, makes the cost difference especially visible.

There's also a caveat on the optimistic ingredient prices. Korean Price Information senior researcher Lee Dong-hoon noted that costs could rise after Jungbok, the second of the three hot days, because this year's monsoon season began later than usual. If the rainy season ends and record heat waves follow, as forecast, prices for fresh ingredients could shift quickly.

For smaller households, Lee pointed to a middle path: samgyetang meal kits and home meal replacement products, which are increasingly available at Korean retailers and priced between 5,000 and 9,000 won per serving. "For those who find preparing the ingredients burdensome, using these products can be another option," he said. For one- or two-person households who don't need a full pot, it's a practical alternative, and still considerably cheaper than sitting down at a restaurant.