Korea (5) Food

 Salty, sweet, spicy, hot, well the Korean food has it all. Many tourists coming to Korea tasting the food for the first time say the food is Hot, red and lots of garlic!

The red tone in the food is from the red pepper. Red pepper is a very common ingredience in Korean cuisine but it is not originated from Korea. It was the Portuguese who took it to China and Korea during the 1500 and 1600 and it is in Korea to stay! The garlic though is much older and no one really knows why the Koreans eat that much garlic. The Japanese usually call the Koreans “garlic eater”, they use that name in disrespect, but I personally salute the Koreans using that much garlic.

A typical Korean meal contains three main ingredience, Rice (pap), soup (guk) and Kimchi. Everything else you see at the table is named Panchan, side dishes, and they are placed in small nice plates all over the table. The more of these panchan you get, the better it is. Kimchi, what’s they? Well it is perhaps the most typical Korean thing you will find. Everyone in Korea likes it and they eat it morning, lunch and evening. It is only in Korea you will find this Kimchi. Kimchi is fermented cabbage.

The cabbage is salted for a day or so and after this it is rinsed and mixed with red pepper, garlic, sugar, fish juice and ginger. The red pepper and the sugar make the cabbage to ferment and after around two days it is Ok to eat. It will stay good for some weeks if it is stored in a cool place.

There are hundreds of different recipe of Kimchi and every family has its own. Back in the old days, women gathered to make this kimchi, so called “kimjang” and they stored the Kimchi in big jars that they dig down in the ground.

There is many different kinds of food and something will fit your pallet. Best I like fish and shellfish. All the food is not hot so I hope I did not scare off readers!

For meat lovers, there are plenty of different dishes. Korea's most famous dish is probably Pulgogi. Pulgogi are thin slices of beef that has been marinated in garlic, soy sauce, pears, sugar, chopped scallions, sesame seeds, sesame oil and chopped onion.
These discs are then fried in this marinade and it is incredibly good. Pul means fire and Gogi means meat.

Seafood
Korea has for centuries if not millennia, been dependent on the sea for their food supply. Seafood has always been important, and accounted for the bulk of animal protein.
It is not hard to imagine that when you look at the map of Korea. The Korean peninsula is surrounded by waters rich in sea and on land spreading its great mountains out so that the patches are very small.

Fish is eaten at almost every meal. Boiled, fried, grilled, salted, dried, such as soup or raw.
The most common fish species in Korea is probably cod, squid, mackerel and Kalchi (reminiscent of our garfish).
For seafood, there are plenty of the goods in the shops and it is not expensive. Lobster, shrimp, mussels, snails, oysters, freshwater snails and crabs can be bought in most shops and everything is very fresh.

We visited a fish market in Seoul and it was filled by small shops where they were selling fish and seafood that I've never seen before. On this incredibly huge market in Seoul you can find almost everything from the sea and for the fish lover, this must be paradise! To walk around in a market as special as this is a bit of a thrill in itself, and another thrill is to see salespeople who scream at us, pulling us to prove that their specific products are the best and even the cheapest. We purchased some live crabs that trick for me in the big paper bag on the bus on our way back home

In Korea they also harvest sea grass (Kim) by hand. Kim is a vitamin and mineral rich food and is widely used in Korean cuisine.

It is very tasty if you brush Kim with sesame oil put on some salt and then heat it a bit.
Koreans have realized that it is an incredible waste of time and money to go around on the various seas to catch fish, and from now much of the everyday fish they consume.
There is something for everybody and it's not very expensive to eat out in Korea. Certainly there are expensive places here as well, but overall it's reasonably priced. There are many places on the streets to eat just for a few bucks, but since the old ladies who are selling this food does not speak English, I will have to point and make yourself understood with body language.

Kalbi is something else that Koreans like. Kalbi is beef that you grill yourself at the table, just like bulgogi, but the pieces are larger and the marinade is different. In addition, rice and various side dishes.

During the football World Cup in Korea back in 2002, some focus was on that the Koreans eat dog. During all of my trips to Korea, I have never tried to eat a dog . Dogs are not something you casually eat. There are some places where you can eat dog but it is very rare and no one I talked to had eaten it.

It began many years ago in Northern China and Korea. It was cold and the life stock died in the strong cold winds. The people starved but noticed that the only thing that survived the winter was those dogs and to keep from starving to death, they ate them up. The meat was good and helpful and made them survive throughout the winter. They then began to breed these dogs as livestock, and this way people could survive the harsh winters. The meat is considered very healthy. The fat in these dogs is just like a vegetable fat so it is healthier than other animal fats.