Korean food
Korean food is usually spicy, in at least some strength. They have this red chili sauce/paste that is used in lots of things. I’ve also seen these red chilis growing in a bunch of places.
The classic Korean meal is the BBQ. A very social experience. Everyone in the group sits around the BBQ which is in the middle of the table, they bring the meat, a whole host of cold side dishes and you cook the meat and roast garlic while you eat the sides. Then, one bitesized piece at a time you wrap the meat after dipping it in whatever sauce you want, in a leaf of lettuce with garlic and anything of the other veg served with it.
Korean BBQ:
The main side dish, which accompanies just about everything is Kimchi, fermented spicy cabbage. I don’t really care for it, too spicy most of the time, but the spicy level does vary and if it’s low then I do like it.
They have noodle bowls here, similar to Japanese or Chinese noodles, all kinds are available. Instant noodles at the convenience store is very popular, most of them have little tables and chairs for people to eat their instant noodles at.
One dish I like a lot is bibimbap, specifically, dolsot bibimbap. It’s rice, in a stone hotpot, with egg, vegetables, sometimes meat and some sauce on top. It’s not mixed when you get it, you do that yourself and add as little or as much chili sauce as you want. Quite tasty.
Dolsot Bibimbap:
Gimbap is basically Korean sushi. Seaweed rolls with different veg in them and a small amount of some kind of fish, I had tuna. It’s good, but nothing compared to Japanese sushi.
Raw fish is really big here, everywhere I’ve been has many “raw fish restaurants” and squid is probably the most popular fish I’ve seen, in all sorts of ways, the dried stuff is pretty good. Eaten like popcorn or peanuts here.
Those are the foods here that I’ve had experience with.
One other note, rice is usually eaten with a spoon not chopsticks. Also the Korean chopsticks are not rounded like most, they are flat and metal. The flat makes it harder to use, and the metal heats up with really hot things, like the BBQ…
Tags: S.Korea, Travel
Adam
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