My Not-So Secret Love Affair with Korean Food

Korean food is different from what I expected but oh my gawd I am in love.

My favorite is bulgogi. Bulgogi is a Korean beef dish and it's usually served with mushrooms, green onions, clear noodles, sweet potatoes, and carrots. I'm not sure exactly what it's marinated with but I know for sure it has soy sauce and sesame oil and lots of deliciousness. Traditionally, it's cooked on an open flame in the middle of the table right in front of you, and you stir it while it cooks. The server just puts the raw ingredients in the pan for you and you turn down the heat when your meal is cooked. Bulgogi has a very distinct, deliciously sweet flavor that I just can't get enough of.

Raw bulgogi

Cooked bulgogi with rice. Nom.

My second favorite is bibimbap, also the namesake for my blog. It means "mixed meal" which it is. It's served in a big bowl, with rice on the bottom, some sort of spicy paste, various vegetables like soy beans, lettuce, cucumbers, seaweed and various vegetables that I don't recognize, then it is topped with a fried egg. Then right before you eat it, you mixed up everything in the bowl so the spicy paste and veggies are evenly distributed and every bite is delicious and nomful.

Delicious bibimbap at Andrew's favorite restaurant

Dakgalbi is something I have eaten my fair share of and I surprisingly haven't gotten sick of. Yet. I mentioned dakgalbi in an earlier post but as a recap, it's a spicy stir fry with chicken, cabbage, onions, and rice cakes. It's cooked traditionally in a pot in the middle of the table and sometimes it can be incredibly spicy depending on how much of the spicy paste they use. One time when we went out for dinner at school, I could barely eat it because it was so flippin' spicy.

Johnlyn and Fathima at my first time eating dakgalbi

A Korean cuisine that I am actually not too fond of is samgyeopsal. Samgyeopsal literally means "back fat". It's pork and it looks like fat, thick slices of raw bacon. When I first tried it, instead of the usual frying pan in the middle, there was a hot plate that was over the flame and you grill the meat yourself on the hot plate and then fat and grease slide off into the bowl underneath. It was tasty, but not something I choose to eat if I had the option. This was served with raw onions and mushrooms that we also grilled. Samgyeopsal, along with dakgalbi is served with lettuce, and you can use the lettuce to make a little burrito.

Grilling the pork and vegetables

Another Korean food that you grill yourself is Kalbisal. It's very similar to samgyeopsal but instead of pork, it's slices of beef. When we went out for kalbisal, instead of a hot plate it was a metal grate so all the fat would drip down into the hot coals underneath.

Johnlyn grilling kalbisal

Every time you go out to eat there are always side dishes. There is always kimchi, and some sort of other pickled vegetable, and there can be anything from peppers, pickles to sweet potatoes and anchovies. Another thing that is always served with Korea food is rice. Lots and lots of rice. It's amazing how much rice a restaurant goes through in a day. Once I find out this ginormous amount I will let you know. Eating out in Korea is pretty much self service. There's usually a bell on the table that you push if you need anything. I feel weird using the "bing-bong" because as a former server I think it's kind of rude, but I guess it's completely normal in Korea and they don't seem to think it's as needy or rude as you'd think.

All the side dishes that came with kalbisal

So far, I love Korean food. Don't get me wrong, some of the food I still struggle with to get down (like kimchi), and they eat a lot of pork, which I also don't like but so far I am doing just fine. I think my emergency box of macaroni and cheese might gather some dust before I break into it.

Nom nom nom.