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Grand Fromage posted:Welcome to the Korean food megathread! Every time a Korean dish shows up someone mentions we should have a megathread, so finally here we go. I've been living in Korea about three years now, so I've become familiar with the food and simultaneously enjoy it and have a litany of complaints about it. This thread is for recipes, praise, complaint, and documentation of the crimes against humanity anyone who has eaten in Korea has seen. All are welcome! First off, cool idea for a thread. I've been living in Korea for over 5 years and have been cooking and eating Korean food the whole time. I don't really have time to read through everything just yet, but I wanted to point out one small mistake here. Korean 간장 comes in a lot of varieties. Just in that picture you posted you can see light and heavier varieties of it. The white bottles in the center-rightish part of your pictures are 맑은 조선강장 is kind of heavier 국간장 used for soups. It'll be salty and strong compared to, say, 샘표 양조간장. I don't know what kind of moon brand you are buying, but Korean soy sauce tends to be way more flavorful than Japanese soy sauce (at least the kinds I grew up with in Hawaii) and has never come across as sweet to me. I'll take the time to write up some stuff when I get off work. I love cooking Korean food and would be more than willing to share recipes that I've created here. The joy of cooking Korean food is that it really doesn't require exact anything, you can modify all of the different ingredients to suit your taste easily. I tend to go heavy on the chili paste/garlic/젓 whenever I get the chance. Korean food is really anything but boring, there is a huge variety in the dishes you can prepare and enjoy.
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Dec 5, 2013 03:18
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 22:29 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Can you write an effortpost on the varieties? All my Korean friends are young so literally none of them have ever cooked anything before (here it's very odd to cook before you get married and move out), and they know less about Korean food than I do. So I don't know anything about soy sauce varieties except trial and error of several before I gave up on Korean soy sauces. Holy poo poo, I'm sorry I posted that and then totally forgot this thread even existed. I'll come back in later on and make an effortpost about 간장. My fiance is Korean and we are both hobby cooks of the quick-and-easy kind. We're both knowledgeable about ingredients and the like, but neither of us likes doing massive cooking projects. However, I'd be happy to share whatever information you are looking for, and if you have something you want me to ask her of my mother-in-law (who is a serious business cooker, she knows her stuff) let me know!
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Mar 5, 2014 23:47
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I can answer, but they are subjective and based on what me/my fiancee think and do. Others are free to contradict me at anytime. 1) I've been living off Korean food for my ~6 years of living here, and I'd say that basic fare tends to be the stews and soups. I pretty much eat Kimchi stew, Doenjang stew, Daikon soup, Bean sprout soup, etc. Fried rice breaks up the stews once in a while, and I'd have to toss in pan-fried pork about once a week or so. Since I'm getting married in a couple months my fiancee has cut our meat intake down (stupid diet) so it's more of a once-every-other-week kind of thing now. Of course, as with all Korean dishes, my mains are accompanied by rice and 2-3 side dishes. Kimchi, sauced dried anchovies/squid/shrimp, boiled sparrow eggs, that kind of thing. 2) I use a Cuchen rice cooker (marketed as Lihom in the states, I believe), but the model I use doesn't appear to be on sale in the US. Mine is a 3 cup dealie that cost me about $75, but it appears they are way more expensive in the states. Koreans love Cuckoo and Cuchen so if you look for those brands you'll have a "top of the line" cooker. Are they worth it? Well, I think so. I grew up in Hawaii and ate rice everyday. I used to use just a crockpot kind of cooker, the kind with a simple on/off switch and a pot lid without any seal. The rice was fine, but when I moved to Korea the cookers here are so much better. The cooker can hold rice for a good solid 2 days before it starts to get old, the flavor is better, and the cook is more even. Ask yourself, is rice a staple you eat everyday? If yes, go for a Cuckoo/Lihom cooker. If no, well then anything will do. 3) 막걸리 is not really strange, but it definitely is a "Korean" thing to drink. I love it, I drink it all the time, but even after spending 6 years in country and speaking the language fairly well I still get people asking me "You drink Makgeolli?" I guess I still get people asking if I eat kimchi though, so ... If you are buying it in the states (or abroad in general) you might get some weird looks, but you aren't really doing anything strange. I'd say it's kind of an older man drink, but nothing extreme. Younger people in Seoul tend to do more of the Beer/soju thing, which is not to say that they don't drink Makgeolli because they do. It's just a more occasional thing. To talk a little bit more about Makgeolli, it's got a good craft situation in Korea, much better than beer, in my opinion. If you look around a bit you can find all kinds of varieties of it, and all of them are slightly different. Omija Makgeolli, Chestnut makgeolli, and sweet potato makgeolli are some of my favorites. The "Park Jeong Hee" president makgeolli is also good, but it is a little bitter for my tastes. If you (or others) are in Seoul and want to try some out let me know, I can point you to a couple decent restaurants that serve them and, possibly, might even organize a meet up. I love me some makgeolli! *edit* Yeah, what Grand Fromage said.
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Mar 6, 2014 03:00
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Posted this in the Goon kakao, but I thought it might do some good here. My fiancee and I mess around once or twice a week with various ingredients trying to make interesting new foods. Most of the time it's something really simple and either comes out just like a normal dish or is a total disaster. Last night though.... Perfection. Do you like Jeon? If so, I got a really simple and easy recipe that makes a mean Jeon for very low price. What you need; 2 eggs 1 package of 팽이버섯 (Enokitake mushrooms according to the dictionary?) 1 can of tuna (I used tuna in oil, water might not have the same flavor) 1) Wash the mushrooms and chop them to about 1-2 inches in length 2) Drain the oil from the tuna 3) Beat two eggs in a bowl 4) mix everything together in the bowl 5) Put some cooking oil on your pan, heat that bastard up on med-high or high heat 6) Pan fry the mix, you want to make small little pancakes of it, not one huge circle. Aim for about as wide as your palm as a max size. 7) Serve with some soy sauce for dipping. The dish really came out tasting like roast pork belly, the flavor was really that good. It's cheap, takes like 5 minutes, and is (relatively) healthy. Try it out, let me know what you guys think. My fiancee and I both love to cook, and we hope to eventually take our cooking skills back to the US and put them to work in a B&B so feedback from less.... Koreanized palates is always welcome.
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Mar 26, 2014 01:00
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DontAskKant posted:That's our idea though, the explanation we hear may be "because of meat smell", but a lot of Koreans we know don't really know how to cook and voiced reasons for things don't always overlap with the original reason. If you can swing using two small pots instead it might be a good experiment. Boil and no boil. Then another with browning. My fiance always does the boil a bit, toss initial water, reboil thing. She told me it's to get rid of a lot of the blood/fat and make the meat more... I dunno how to put it, but I guess "pure?" I always do it just to get rid of all the dunk that builds up when boiling meats. Then again, my Galbijjim comes out nothing like Leopold Scotch's, for starters I don't blend all of the vegetables into a past but rather chop them up a little smaller than his and boil it all in the water together. Lets you eat some vegetables along with your beef, and chunks up the galbijjim overall. Next time I make it I can document how my fiance and I do it if you like. However, as has been pointed out, beef is way expensive over here and my fiancee and I eat it maybe once a year. We make galbijjim more frequently with pork, and I think the boiling step is much more important with the extra fattiness of pork.
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Apr 16, 2014 22:35
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Xarb posted:The "meat taste" thing is a legitimate thing for Koreans which is why most Koreans won't eat lamb. This, I don't mind the taste but I can detect a definite difference between boiled-and-cleaned beef/pork or just straight up boiled beef/pork. My fiancee is really picky about it, and I don't mind "cleaning" it cause I have a bad heart anyways so reducing fat intake and what not is just a generally good idea.
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Apr 17, 2014 05:07
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 22:29 |
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Leopold Stotch posted:So I've heard the beef prices come up a few times, and out of curiosity, here in Massachusetts I pay about $4 / lb to $8 / lb depending on how fancy of a grocery store I go to. What are korean prices like on short rib? I go to a local butcher because I'm a sappy loyal customer and don't mind paying more, I usually pay about $15-20 for a pound of ground beef. Of course, depends on cut and quality, but I'm buying Korean beef so the prices tend to be high. I bought 3 kilos of steak cuts and bulgogi for my fiancee's parents last holiday and it cost me about $150. quote:Please do, I'd be curious. With two people it's even easier to take photos. Roger that, I'll try to document it when it happens. No guarantee it'll happen soon, but I'll try to see if my fiancee is down for some galbijjim this weekend. Grand Fromage posted:Complaining about meat tasting like meat sums up so much of how I feel about (some) Korean food. Haha, while I get what you're saying it's not some kind of culinary travesty. I'd say that the Korean style of boil-drain-boil works well when you do it to get rid of the excess fat and blood in the meat. My fiancee and I just boil it for a bit and dump it. I guess one could say it's a little more bland, but I kind of like it. The dish itself tends to be less.... rich (I can't remember the English word off the top of my head, less 느끼해) while still maintaining a good beef flavor and letting the vegetables have a little more effect on the dish. Of course, everyone has their own style and what not. Also, I would totally be interested in learning how to do plum stuff. I'm thinking of making 매실주 this year (since I can't do beer ㅠㅠ) and having a non-alcoholic alternative might be nice once in a while 
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Apr 18, 2014 01:12
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