Amsterdam chef making 22,000 bitterballen in Korea for Olympics borrels

Amsterdam chef Piet Brink flew to South Korea on Tuesday evening to make bitterballen during the Winter Olympics. He will make a total of around 22 thousand of the deep fried Dutch snacks, to serve at the Holland Heineken House every day of the Games. "I'll work around 10 hours every day", he said to Het Parool.

Brink is going to Pyeonchang himself, because exporting bitterballen, or even the ingredients thereof, to South Korea proved to be impossible. He has two days after his arrival to get ingredients together and test out his recipe with the local produce. The Amsterdam chef is taking an assistant who can speak Korean along to help with the shopping.

"I especially hope that I can find a good yeast extract, as a flavor enhancer for the broth", Brink said to the newspaper. "The rest is probably not very difficult: root vegetables, leeks and onions I can get there."

This is not Brink's first time making bitterballen for the Winter Olympics. He also did so in Russia during the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. "It was very difficult to find breadcrumbs then. In the end I bought all the croutons from a Russian supermarket to process into breadcrumbs."