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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! No need for a lot more introduction, let's get down to business. First, the basic ingredients of the Korean pantry. Korean Ingredients  Soy sauce. Ganjang (간장) is in all sorts of things, much like other Asian cuisines. Korean soy sauce varieties are still something of a mystery to me because none of my friends here cook and can explain anything to me. They're all essentially the light style, though. I don't like Korean soy sauce much, it's always a gamble between okay, waaaay too salty, or sweetened, so I stopped using it. There's not a huge difference so don't feel the need to hunt down Korean soy sauce unless you just feel like it. I always use Chinese light soy personally. Substitutions: Chinese light soy sauce or standard Japanese soy sauce.  Vinegar (rice/apple). Sikcho (식초) is necessary for lots of sauces and dipping. The standard types of vinegar here are rice vinegar and apple vinegar, there are other varieties but these are the two you need. Korean varieties of vinegar are sometimes sweetened, but not as often as other things. Substitutions: It's rice/apple vinegar, there's nothing special about the Korean varieties. Any kind you have will be okay. Rice wine. Cheongju (청주) is used in sauces mainly, the same way it is in other cuisines. It's not really for drinking ever, unlike some of the other varieties. I've never been served it or seen it available. The Korean stuff I've tried has been sweetened, so I stopped using it, I just use Chinese stuff since I have that around anyway. Substitutions: Sake or Chinese rice wine.  Doenjang (된장) is fermented soybean paste. It's pretty salty and sometimes has some soybeans hanging out in it whole, not totally ground up. It appears in a variety of sauces and soups, and sometimes even shows up by itself as a paste for grilled meats and stuff. Substitutions: Doenjang and miso are essentially the same thing. They aren't exactly the same so do try to find doenjang, but miso is fine if you can't.  Gochujang (고추장) is chili paste, and I'd say it's the star ingredient of Korean cuisine. It shows up in loving everything (including many places it really shouldn't). It's made from chilies, soybeans, salt, rice, all fermented together. It's often sweetened a bit as well. Gochujang is used by itself and often mixed with other things in a huge variety of sauces. Substitutions: There really is no substitute for gochujang, you need to find it if you want to cook Korean food extensively. Chinese doubanjiang (豆瓣酱) is similar but it isn't the same thing at all. If you have no other choice you could use it, but it's worth your time to find actual gochujang.  Ssamjang (쌈장) is a combination of doenjang, gochujang, and often some other poo poo which is used as a condiment. Typically it's eaten with barbecue, ssam is the name for what you have when you fill a leaf with barbecue and such and wrap it all up, so the name meants it's sauce for that. You can make this at home by mixing things, I just buy it since I can score a half kilo tub for like 50 cents on sale. Substitutions: None.  Gochugaru (고추가루) is dried hot pepper powder. This is used to spice up things and making kimchi. Gochugaru is not just Korean, it's also made in China and the Chinese stuff is literally exactly the same for like 1/4 the price (at least in Korea) so I highly recommend buying Chinese instead if you can find it. Substitutions: I guess you could use any ground up dried hot red peppers but gochugaru is made from a specific species, so I'd find it. For general spicing up of sauces and such sriracha works great.  Sesame oil. Chamgireum (참기름) is... oil. Made from sesame seeds. This shouldn't be difficult to find. There are refined ones that are used more for cooking and strong ones for finishing, get the strong finishing kind.  Kimchi (김치) is kimchi. I'm mentioning it here because it's used as an ingredient in a lot of stuff, as well as obviously being a food in its own right. Kimchi will get its own post.  Dashima (다시마) is dried kelp, used in making seafood stock called dashi (Korean version isn't exactly the same as Japanese typically) as well as eaten. Good dashima should be covered with a white powder, don't wash it off! That's pure MSG and it's the basic point of using this. Substitute: Dashima is just the Korean name for kombu, it's the same thing. Get Korean or Japanese, whatever's convenient.  Saeujeot (새우젓) are tiny preserved shrimps. They're used in sauces and making kimchi. Little umami and shrimp flavor bombs, and they help get the bacteria going in the kimchi I believe. Substitute: You could use shrimp pastes from other Asian cuisines. Generally everything I've seen with saeujeot, you could just leave them out if you don't have any and it'd be okay.  Fish sauce. Aegjeot (액젓) is the juice of fermented anchovies and such. It's salty and umami and awesome in all kinds of things, you're probably aware of it. Substitute: Any fish sauce is fine, I've never actually used Korean. I just use my trusty bottle of Squid brand.  Panko. Bbanggaru (빵가루) is a form of bread crumb from Japan used to bread various fried things. It makes a special kind of crunchiness that regular bread crumbs don't. Substitute: Korean is exactly the same as Japanese, get whatever.  Gim (김) is a sheet of dried algae, often called seaweed but it actually isn't. You find this everywhere as a side dish, shredded onto rice, put in soup, wrapping kimbap, et cetera. There are different seasonings for this, different sizes, and the bags of pre-shredded gim especially have lots of flavorings like dried anchovies or sesame seeds. Substitute: Japanese nori is the same thing, they're both used here.  Corn Syrup/Sugar are used very commonly, because Korea is obsessed with making all food sweet. See just a portion of the corn syrup aisle at the grocery store above. I, personally, use no corn syrup and little to no sugar when I cook Korean food. Dried anchovies/fish in general are used in a lot of things, I have to be honest I'm not too familiar with all of this because I haven't used it. I'll update later. Vegetables Most vegetables in Korea are either pickled or cooked to death and drowned in sauce. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of them. Pickling will get its own post later since it covers a wide variety of Korean foods, including obviously kimchi. Common vegetables you will be using in Korean food are the following: Bean sprouts Napa cabbage Green cabbage Lettuce Onions Green onions Leeks Garlic Ginger Potatoes Sweet potatoes Carrots Cucumbers Hot peppers Perilla leaves Daikon This is by no means a complete list. Meats Korean cuisine makes heavy use of squid, octopus, cuttlefish, little fish, chicken, duck, and mainly pork. Beef also exists but is expensive as gently caress here so it's not used as widely, feel free to take advantage of your cheap American beef and use it more widely. Lamb was once very popular, but the Japanese got rid of it during the occupation and now most Koreans refuse to touch it. Dog meat is less common than it was but my little neighborhood market still has a butcher selling it. Tofu is also common protein. Herbs and Spices Korean food uses no herbs or spices. Cilantro was once popular, but has mostly gone away for reasons I've never discovered, and most Koreans refuse to eat it now. Salt is used, and gochugaru. Otherwise, I have not seen any herbs or spices in any Korean food. The closest exception is the use of Japanese curry powder occasionally. I hate Japanese curry so I never include it. Cooking Techniques Korean food doesn't use any specialized techniques like stir-frying. I've observed little to no technique at all in Korean kitchens—throw everything in a pot at once and boil it to death is the standard procedure for like half the food. I encourage you to use the techniques you already know and ignore any Korean technique advice you see. The Korean Table  Korean food is served all at once in like a thousand plates. Being the dishwasher at a Korean restaurant must be hell on Earth. Utensils are thin metal chopsticks and a spoon. You eat the rice with the spoon, not chopsticks like you are used to from Chinese or Japanese. You can do whatever of course. In a typical Korean meal you have rice, which is the main dish. Then there's a soup of some sort. If there's meat or fish, that's a major side dish. Then you have a profusion of other side dishes called banchan. These range from kimchi to namul to jeon to hot dogs. Useful links for finding stuff online: Online Hangeul keyboard The official Romanization system of (south) Korean so you can spell things Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2013 16:20
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Table of contents Dalkjuk (닭죽) Sundubu (순두부) Kimchi Jjigae (김치찌개) Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2013 16:20
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Reserved
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Dec 4, 2013 16:20
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Scott Bakula posted:Does gochujang last forever because I bought a tub to make 1 meal and that was probably a year ago and I realise I've not used it since and its just sat in a cupboard. It lasts a very long time in the fridge. I would throw it out and buy a new one if it's that old, some things aren't worth dying for. hoshkwon posted:My girlfriend is Chinese and she thinks Korean food is rather "boring", which I could kind of agree with when you compare it to Chinese food. My main complaint about Korean food is how boring it is. There's no use of subtle flavor, everything has one overpowering flavor and there are only three choices in that flavor category: spicy, sweet, or gross. But, I live in Korea so it's easy to get bored with the food when it's everywhere and has little variety. I actually think you guys who live in the US or wherever are lucky and will enjoy Korean food more than anyone who lives in Korea. But, as I am no longer victimized by lovely Korean food daily at school lunch, I find myself wanting it more than I ever used to. Here are some pictures from my local street market, where I buy most of my vegetables and fruit (except non-standard Korean stuff or cheapo Costco):  The market just sets up in this side street every five days.  A number of dried little fish. These are used in some dishes and also just eaten straight as snacks.  Dried big fish, and non-dried. You may see the lack of ice, this is okay now in winter but when it's 110F in summer and the fish are sitting out still without any ice, I avoid the street market fish. And piles of dead shellfish in the heat.    Kimchi making season, so there are piles of daikon and napa cabbage everywhere.  Like this bus seat entirely buried under it.  The vegetable cart is a common sight with old women. This isn't forced Hobbit perspective either, old women here are four feet tall. The legacy of famine.  One of the food stalls.  A couple from the grocery store. One section of the Spam aisle. American Spam is fancy and expensive, mostly it's Korean knockoff spam.  The tuna aisle. When you see tuna in a Korean recipe, they mean a can 99% of the time. Edit: Oh, one other thing on your Korean pantry. Most of those ingredients are fermented/salted/otherwise preserved and will last a while. I just got new tubs of gochujang and ssamjang, and they both have 2015 expiration dates on them. So feel free to just buy everything all at once when you find it, most of it will last at least a year. I keep my gochujang/ssamjang/doenjang/saeujeot in the fridge. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 01:05
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USMC_Karl posted:Korean 간장 comes in a lot of varieties. 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. Archer2338 posted:
Ulsan, which is technically the provinces but is by far the richest city in Korea so the usual rules don't apply (Seoul markets are almost always cheaper, for one). It's not universal, some markets have ice all the tome, some have it sometimes. At the neighborhood markets like mine, ice is 50/50 on a good day. I've seen plenty of buckets of dead mussels sitting in the 100 degree heat and sunshine though. Considering that food sanitation is basically non-existent here, it's not a huge shocker that ice is sketchy. I just don't buy seafood from neighborhood markets, I go to the store or the big wet market downtown and get them still swimming. Ra-amun posted:Is there anything else that chunjang is used for other than jajangmyeon? I have a couple of decently filled jars from when I bought more forgetting that I already had some lying around. I hate jjajangmyeon with a passion and know nothing about it, but from some looking around it doesn't appear that it's used in anything else. I actually had never heard of chunjang until now and I've read a whole lot of Korean recipes (except for jjajangmyeon because of my hate) so I suspect it isn't used in anything else.
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Dec 5, 2013 13:37
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What city do you live in where this is the case, GF? I know at least in Seoul/Bundang the open-air markets keep fish over ice, and the GIANT 노량진 seafood market even keeps a lot of the fish in tanks. Are you more out in the provinces?
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hallo spacedog posted:Jjajangmyeon seems like an odd thing to hate. I could see being like "eh" about it, but hate? Even with Tangsooyook? Ah well, I'll chalk it up to some kind of traumatic experience. It's just super gross to me. Smells awful tastes awful. Tangsuyuk is acceptable when you know that's what you're getting, but that first time going into a "Chinese" restaurant without knowing that Korean Chinese is not Chinese is quite the experience. The winner for worst Korean food is hongeo, skate fermented in its own urine. The Korean version of that rotten shark thing from Iceland. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 00:42
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feelz good man posted:If it is a food, boil it in water. For variety, boil your food in oil. This is essentially correct, and why I suggest completely ignoring anything you find about Korean cooking technique and instead doing things you're used to like searing your meat and using stocks. Korean cuisine is still barely out of famine mode, the country desperately needs some new chefs willing to gently caress with the traditions and elevate the food to where it should be. Think the US 20-30 years ago, Korea is still in its canned cream of mushroom soup phase. Korean food doesn't have any specialty techniques anyway that I've seen. It's all basic stuff common across cultures, with a lot of borrowing from Japanese and Chinese. Edit: Actually I can think of one, Korean-style fried chicken. Since this is a magical place where you can call a restaurant and a suicidal guy on a motorcycle will bring a box of fried chicken to your door for free, I've never actually made it. Here's a recipe: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/04/dinner-tonight-korean-fried-chicken-recipe.html Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 03:53
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Dalkjuk (닭죽) Juk (죽) is the Korean version of congee, a rice porridge common across much of Asia. It fills a cultural role more or less identical to that of chicken soup in the west, and is also hella cheap so it's one of my go-tos when my wallet is light. You can make juk with anything--crab, shrimp, fish, pumpkin, etc--but this is the chicken version. You will need: 11-12 cups of water. 1.5 cups of rice for a thick juk, 1 cup for thin. Green onions, onions, and garlic. Salt. That is for traditional juk, I usually add a few other things. You can do basically anything with this dish, it's more of a way of cooking than a recipe.  Fill your big pot with the water and let the rice soak. Wash it a little but don't worry about getting it too clean, just get the worst of the dust off. You probably don't need to wash it at all if you are lazy.  Throw in chicken and bring to a boil. I usually use about a kilo for this amount. Two 500g birds here since they were on sale.  Add roughly chopped onions and a shitload of garlic. You don't have to mince it if you don't want to. Let that simmer until the chicken is cooked through.  Remove your chicken and engage in the wonderful process of picking the meat off it (save the remains for stock, you didn't cook anywhere near all the flavor out of them). Add the rice to the pot and let it cook for half an hour or so, it should be falling apart and making the whole thing thick when it's done. Now is the time to start salting to taste.  This is also where I do nontraditional things. For this batch I added some fish sauce, black pepper, red pepper, MSG, and lime juice. If you want vegetables, add them toward the end to cook to appropriate doneness. I threw in some red cabbage for this batch, which made it a little purple. You can do anything you want, throw in whatever vegetables you have sitting around. Think of it like soup, it's a good clean the fridge meal. Once the rice is cooked, add the chicken back in.  And serve. I added some shredded gim on top. You would also top with green onion now, if you have it (I did not). One note about juk if you've never made it: juk is like lava, I've never seen another food that retains heat as well. Be careful with it, and cooling it down to store takes a while.
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Dec 6, 2013 04:22
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Speaking of David Chang, has anyone else tried the Momofuku kimchi recipe? I don't like it at all, it doesn't taste anything like what I expect from kimchi and not in a good way. I don't know if it's just me.
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Dec 6, 2013 17:19
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Archer2338 posted:I can't fathom having dakjuk (or samgaetang) without having some ginseng or other root/medicinal herbs(?) in there... Dates as well, usually stuffed in the chicken. Otherwise the broth is just too bland esp with the rice. I hate ginseng so I don't do it that way. It is bland in its basic form, which is why I usually add more stuff to spice it up. I've never actually seen ginseng or herbs of any kind in juk, but I've only gone out for it a few times. Actually this time I didn't stir much and ended up with a layer of burned rice at the bottom, not like dolsot bibimbap crispy but black as hell. However, the entire juk tasted really smoky and was awesome, so I'm going to try to do that again next time.
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Dec 7, 2013 10:18
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The vinegar/sesame/sugar is weird in that, not normal in kimchi. But you can do whatever you want with kimchi recipes, that's part of the fun. I don't follow a recipe, just play around, but usually the garlic/ginger will be roughly equal volume. Gochugaru is a matter of taste, how much heat you like. You want a lot of salt to preserve it, you can use a similar technique to making sauerkraut. Salt the cabbage until it's a bit saltier than you'd want to eat, that's going to be about right and should keep it from going bad. Just a bit though, because the fish sauce is going to add more salt. I've seen fish sauce ranging from a tablespoon to half a cup. Koreans don't really make kimchi by the single head, but what you can do is mix up the paste and add it until everything has a coating, that should be about the right amount. Any extra you can use for something else.
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Dec 20, 2013 03:54
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I've seen rice flour in recipes on the internet, but I've never seen it in Korea. Kimchi is the kind of thing where every grandma has her own recipe though, so I wouldn't discount it as a thing that exists somewhere. I personally have never used it or seen any reason to.
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Dec 20, 2013 04:25
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In kimchi making season the street markets give you a good idea of what goes into kimchi. What I see in mine is: napa cabbage, daikon radish, shredded carrot, green onions, gochugaru, fish sauce, saeujeot, salt, minced ginger, minced garlic. You can futz with it as much as you like but for basic Korean kimchi (people usually make both cabbage and daikon kimchi, separately though), that's what you need.
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Dec 20, 2013 04:44
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That may be the folk wisdom but through SCIENCE! we know salt blocks bitter taste receptors, and given the amount of salt in kimchi there should be no reason to try to cover any bitterness with sugar. I also suspect the entire thing is nationalist nonsense but can't prove that either way. E: As for the saeujeot if you don't like it, leave it out. I would say fermentation, gochugaru, and maybe garlic are the sine qua non of kimchi. Everything else is up to taste. Even then, there is fresh unfermented kimchi or mul kimchi with no gochugaru, so. Feel free to do whatever you want and experiment. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 09:44
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Looks a lot different than the sundubu I've had before, have to try that.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:32
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hallo spacedog posted:It definitely takes a ton of liberties, but I love the way it turns out. I'm fine with the liberties, when I've had sundubu before it was usually boring. Just the gochugaru should help a lot.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:35
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I still haven't tried my kimchi'd green beans or asparagus, trying to get a handle on basic cabbage first. Also I don't have that kind of money right now, asparagus is not cheap in Korea.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:09
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Why? Asparagus plus kimchi flavoring seems a perfect fit to me. I don't know about the fermentation though.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:14
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EVG posted:Was this soondubu? Yep. Specifically haemul sundubu (해물 순두부). Haemul is seafood.
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Jan 9, 2014 01:15
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Hey, speaking of. I don't do samgyeopsal at home much because it's a communal barbecue restaurant thing here, but I do make a lot of kimchi jjigae. First, this recipe is not normal at all. I have combined things I found at several different jjigae places I liked, and my own ideas. If you want traditional jjigae, boil some samgyeopsal and kimchi in water for half an hour and throw in some tofu and mushrooms. Ingredients: Pork shoulder, cut into bite size cubes, with the huge hunks of fat removed (keep these) Onions, sliced Garlic, minced Ginger, minced Chicken stock Kimchi. Most people use older, sour kimchi. I like it with regular kimchi, it's up to you. Fish sauce Sesame oil MSG Gochugaru Gochujang Potatoes Tofu Hard boiled eggs  I start by throwing the hunks of fat into the pan and letting them render a bit. Then I took them out and added in the pork shoulder, just to brown it. Remove and reserve.  Add some vegetable oil if you need to, then sweat your onions, add the garlic and ginger and fry until fragrant. Add a little water and scrape the pork shoulder bits off the pan.  Now add your chopped up kimchi, stock (or a stock/water mix), a little sesame oil. It's strong and just for flavor, maybe a couple teaspoons. Gochugaru until it's spicy enough for you, a generous tablespoon or two of gochujang (not traditional, I like the flavor), give it a few shots of fish sauce and some MSG. Also put the chunks of pork fat in for flavor, take them back out at the end. Let it simmer for an hour and a half.  The long simmer gives it a nice color and flavor. Taste, adjust your spices. Add the potatoes. If you're cooking this for Koreans don't use potatoes, I don't know why but every Korean I know of is absolutely disgusted by the idea of potatoes in kimchi jjigae, like physical revulsion and refusing to even touch it. I don't understand, they're great in it and Koreans eat a lot of potatoes but anyway, keep it in mind. Cook them through. Put your pork back in to finish cooking it.  Add your cubed tofu and eggs. I like hard boiled quail eggs but only had chicken eggs around. If you like mushrooms this would be the time to add them.  And serve. My preferred way is to fill the bowl about halfway with rice then jjigae on top of it. You can't see the rice but it's in there!
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Jan 10, 2014 01:59
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Koreans like chewy texture in general. Hoe (회) is usually from fresh fish swimming in the restaurant tank, not frozen. At the big fish market here you point at a fish in the tank and they cut it up and serve it to you. They also prefer flatfish for it, or others that we would consider trash fish. Frequently the bones are left in, but not always. I was told by a Korean hoe chef that the reason for this is that taking bones out is too much trouble for them to be bothered to do it. I've had hoe many times (it's the standard meal when the boss takes you out to show off how rich they are) and never had any I liked. It's always chewy and flavorless. Koreans really like chewy and flavorless things, they're all over the cuisine. Anyway the worst Korean dish is hongeohoe (홍어회), skate fermented in its own urine. It's the same thing as that rotten shark poo poo from Iceland. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 02:58
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tynam posted:It's not that they like flavorless things, they just like dousing everything in face-punching sauces. That doesn't explain stuff like ddeok, though. Some of it's good but most of it is just chewing on rubber. The technology for gum to retain flavor for more than 15 seconds hasn't reached Korea yet either, and I suspect there's a reason for that. It's just different, if you were raised with it I'm sure it's enjoyable, but to the normal western palate chewing on a sea cucumber, which tastes like nothing and is probably tougher than a literal truck tire, is not enjoyable.
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Jan 15, 2014 03:14
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tynam posted:Hence the sauce drenching, like ddeokbokki. I really don't see any flavorless aspect to Korean food unless you pick it apart and eat it in a way it wasn't really intended to be consumed. I did grow up eating Korean food though, so I'm probably biased as hell. Possibly. Every expat who lives here would recognize "chewy and flavorless" as a common Korean thing. I don't mean the white ddeok for soups/ddeokbokki, I mean the dessert stuff or songpyeon that taste like nothing. At best they have a little squirt of honey that goes away within a second and then you're just chewing.
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Jan 15, 2014 05:22
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The yellow powder stuff is pretty good, I don't know what the name of it is.
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Jan 15, 2014 15:06
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Archer2338 posted:And none of you have had raw abalone (jeonbok) or sea pineapple (meong-gae), apparently, because those two are pretty strong in flavor. The latter feels like Poseidon himself is slapping your tongue if you get a fresh enough one. Oh god sea pineapple/sea squirt. I'd call it Poseidon jizzing in your mouth. Abalone I've had at sushi places, never much liked it. SymmetryrtemmyS posted:For any other non-Korean speakers, that's Pacific chub mackerel. I think it's any mackerel. Fish names can be somewhat nonspecific. Like the name for cod can apparently be used for all sorts of things that definitely are not cod, in my unfortunate experience.
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Jan 16, 2014 02:11
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Specialist posted:That's really interesting. Also hilarious since literally 60-70% of Korean vocabulary is from Chinese. Basically everything modern (and things Koreans clearly must've had words for already, like game and orange--I don't understand why they're loanwords) is directly from English. In North Korean they're often from Russian instead. Tilting at windmills. Probably just specifically targeting Japanese loanwords, though I've never heard eomuk before here in the southeast. It's always odeng. Other ones that come to mind: udong is udon, ramyeon is ramen (mostly in the instant noodle context), donkkaseu is tonkatsu, soba and takoyaki are used without alteration. Chobap is sushi, which is interesting because it's translating the concept instead of just using the word. Cho is short for sikcho, vinegar, and bap is cooked rice. I've also seen susi used occasionally.
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Jan 24, 2014 02:41
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Dashi is the broth, yeah. The standard Korean one is kombu + dried anchovies instead of katsuobushi. It then tastes a lot different once you actually get it since it's had odeng and whatever boiling in it for hours. Those odeng carts are terrifying but sometimes I am hungry and it's 50 cents so, whatever. 
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Jan 24, 2014 04:23
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I'm happy at the minimal sugar in that recipe. I really like ddeokbokki when it's not super sweet but it's hard to find anywhere that makes it that way.
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Jan 29, 2014 01:16
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dino. posted:Scallion pancakes. With the suggestion to fry them crispy, not the gloopy poo poo Koreans like. The crispy texture is much more pleasant for non-Korean palates.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:16
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Archer2338 posted:Similar to omelet has me thinking 계란말이? Kind of similar to an omelet except it's rolled up and then cut into pieces much like kimbap. Eggs, some greens, and cheese was usually in my mother's recipe. That was my first thought too, but it's basically tamagoyaki and it'd be clearly an egg thing, not bready. Bready and getting old fast makes me think some sort of jeon but I can't think of one that's yellow.
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Feb 11, 2014 05:01
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There's a stereotype that makgeolli is for poor people/old people/farmers. gently caress 'em, it's the only good Korean alcohol. It's the only one I'll miss if I leave here.
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Mar 6, 2014 02:47
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pandariot posted:About rice - warning: ignorant American It's something of a mystery to us here, too, between all the rice and all the sugar. Korean portion sizes aren't that different, especially at restaurants. You get a lot more exercise here since you walk everywhere. I live in the city with the highest rate of car ownership in the country, a whopping 36%. The level of fatness is definitely increasing though. People also restrict rice intake at times. Korean Air flight attendants aren't allowed to eat rice, for an example.
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Mar 7, 2014 01:58
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question incoming - it's surprising that rice is such a staple of the Korean diet, and that so many Koreans are thinner and healthier than Americans. Is it that Koreans eat less meat? more vegetables? smaller portions?
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I like that the picture appears to be from a Sears yearbook studio in 1983. Korea is incredibly bad at tourist advertising, they've done this a few times with different foods and it's always hilariously bad. The bibimbap ad about how it was an offering food at funerals is my favorite. People love thinking about their impending death when choosing lunch. They actually had a thing in my city soliciting ideas on how to advertise Korean food to westerners, but I don't think they really cared. My suggestion was stop with the "traditional" poo poo, you need to hook people on something easy and draw them in. So, promote Korean fried chicken and barbecue. Literally any non-vegetarian westerner is on board with those because they're amazing, they're different enough to intrigue you into more Korean stuff, but familiar enough that no one's going to be intimidated. Bulgogi isn't a bad introductory food but that ad is terrible. No one knows who Choo is (this is why you consult non-Koreans) and there's zero information about bulgogi. I love that Dokdo is on the website too, of course it is.
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Mar 15, 2014 03:03
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Lawman 0 posted:How am I supposed to drink soju? Open bottle. Pour bottle down drain. Purchase makgeolli and drink it. The wisest statement ever made in the Korea living thread was "Free soju is too expensive."
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Mar 15, 2014 19:26
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The "get rid of the smell" thing is commonly cited for various meat prep techniques here, such as preboiling, soaking in vinegar, or soaking in milk. I suspect this is a holdover from the famine days when you couldn't be picky about how rotten your food was, much like the standard cooking technique of boiling things forever makes sense if they're questionably safe. I skip all those steps and instead throw my meat away if it smells. And I get live shellfish instead of boiling dead ones for 30 minutes to sterilize them. I've only seen one preboiling thing that made sense, which was to get out clotted blood and general gunk when making ramen broth. It didn't change the flavor but the broth comes out that nice pinky porky color, whereas if you don't boil and clean the bones up first it is a lot browner.
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Apr 16, 2014 14:07
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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. Yeah, this is true. I've met vanishingly few people here who have ever cooked, and those who do are constantly in disbelief that I am capable of boiling water. I've brought homemade kimchi to work and people still didn't actually believe I made it. Plus language issues. If you can try all three that'd be awesome. Beef is prohibitively expensive over here, I'm not loaded enough to experiment with it.
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Apr 16, 2014 14:53
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Why would you want to get rid of the part that has the most flavor? 
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Apr 17, 2014 02:25
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DontAskKant posted:What part do you think has the most flavor? If you aren't browning it, clarifying meat is not unheard of. What's odd is that most of the dishes that do that add other things that cause you to lose that visual clarity. Especially with 'messy' butchery i could see why you want to get some impurities out. The fat. They're not clarifying any sauces here. The combination of never browning meat and removing as much fat as possible just seems like blandness. I guess that's why you cover it in so much gochujang you couldn't taste the meat anyway. Or I'm making up for a misspent youth of cutting fat off things. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 02:48
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DontAskKant posted:There's plenty of fat in things. It's in a layer on top. But if you're boiling the fat out and discarding the liquid? I mean when I make a soupy thing and the pork is fattier than I want, I cut the excess fat off before cooking and save it for flavoring other stuff.
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Apr 17, 2014 03:46
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 17:14 |
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Complaining about meat tasting like meat sums up so much of how I feel about (some) Korean food. E: I'm having a bad year and gonna stop posting complaints about dumb cooking. Looking forward to an actual side by side taste test to see what's up. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 11:10
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