Category: Korean Food 101

Acorn Jelly Salad (Tastes Better Than It Sounds)
At the mountain restaurants, including my favorite dong-dong-ju place, one of the plates you can order with your food and alcohol is DotoriMok 도토리묵. It’s Acorn Jelly Salad.
According to Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond, acorns were not practically domesticable nuts. There was too little meat for the trouble one had to go through, and the tannins in acorns made them too bitter to be bearable.
Somehow, Koreans have figured out how to remove the bitterness and convert them into an earthy jelly. In DotoriMok, they almost have no flavor because of the other ingredients.
DotoriMok itself is spicy and garlicky. It’s one of the few salads that goes well with alcohol, especially rice liquors like makkoli. It contains leafy lettuce, slivers of onions, cucumbers, carrots, and a dressing made of sesame oil, red pepper powder, sesame seeds, and loads of garlic.
Good salad. Gives you killer breath for the rest of the day.
Update: My Korean Kitchen has posted a recipe for this.
Acorn Jelly
August 26, 2006
“Popping Sue” – The Summertime Treat
I haven’t seen any treat like this anywhere else. Patbingsu 팥빙수 (or “Popping Sue” to foreigners) is a Korean summertime treat, that, in my mind, divides ice cream into all its separate elements and throws it back together minus the eggs.
It’s a simple concept, really. It’s shaved ice topped with sweetened red beans (the “pat”), fruit (usually canned, jellied, or dried), syrup, ddeok (chewy rice cakes), and milk (fresh or condensed). Now, that’s not how each patbingsu is made. Giving a concrete official ingredient list of patbingsu is like giving an official ingredient list to an ice cream sundae. It depends on who’s serving it and the taste of the customer. Some varieties get pretty far out there. I’ve heard of creamed corn being thrown on there.
Like Bibimbap, you take this concoction and stir it until the individual components are unrecognizable.
This is another one of those dishes that creates emphatic divided opinions amongst people. Eun Jeong absolutely loves it. Others hate it. I personally — well, I’d take an ice cream over Popping Sue, but if it’s put in front of me, I’d enjoy it. I’m one of those foreigners who actually likes the sweetened red beans. It’s the shaved ice with milk that turns me off.
I think it reminds me of a bad experiment I made with the Snoopy Sno-Cone Makertm when I was a kid.

August 14, 2006
SundaeGuk – I'm in the Mood for Some Nasty
I’ve tried lots of different soups in Korea. And I know sundae, Korea’s odd-textured noodle and blood sausage. I always passed by places that offered SundaeGuk 순대국, a stew using that ingredient. Yet I frequently found an excuse to eat something else. I had no idea what was in it — other than sundae.
Then one day, soon after our move, I ordered it. This was mainly because Eun Jeong and I were tired from moving, and we wanted delivery, and we hadn’t accumulated many magnetic restaurant menus on our door yet. Doors in Korea tend to get covered in restaurant delivery fliers after a while. Ours was still fresh and empty.
So one of the only places we had a number for was a HaeJangGuk place. I was not in the mood for Fred Flinstone Hangover Soup, so I opted to finally try a bowl of SundaeGuk.
A few minutes later, it arrived at the door in a heavy black bowl with a divided container full of side dishes and hot peppers and a stainless steel covered bowl of rice. I gingerly removed the plastic wrap from the hot bowl.
The steam smelled of heaven. It was the smell of bacon frying in the morning. I unwrapped the spoon and dug in. The broth itself contained a lot of pork fat, as was evident when I refrigerated the leftovers, and the entire soup hardened. Yet it was the little nasty treasures that made this soup special. There was, of course, the sundae. And this was the best way I have ever had this dark savory gelatinous sausage. Its little friends included slabs of fatty pork belly, some liver, crunchy yet tasty bits of cartilege, and the forbidden but irresistable gobchang, intestines.
It was a heavy stew, and I couldn’t finish it all in one sitting. Only once have I finished an entire bowl. It fills my grease quota for the week when I’m missing my good ole American greasy food. It’s not for the culinary wimps out there. It is another great example of Korean Man Food.
August 14, 2006
Galbi Jjim — Oh Little Ribs, How Did I Get Along Without You?

I had never ordered Galbi Jjim before. I guess because it tends to be served at galbi places. And when we eat at galbi places, we choose to eat the kind fired over charcoal.
But I had to try this one, simply because it was one of the obvious main Korean dishes that I hadn’t had.
I convinced Eun Jeong, who was more in the mood for seafood stew, to humor me and go out for galbi jjim at Nolboo, a chain of Korean galbi houses.
I am so glad I tried this, and I am craving more. It’s ribs, not the butterflied rib meat served for charcoal galbi. It’s ribs on the bone. They’re smothered in gochujang, vegetables, and seasoning and served steaming hot.
Unlike the other galbi, there’s no assembly. Just dig in with your hands and eat. It’s a very simple looking dish.
The taste is a little smoky and very saucy. This is the closest I’ve gotten to BBQ from back home in Korea. As soon as I can get a recipe, I’m posting it.
And Eun Jeong agreed that it was better than seafood stew.

July 12, 2006
What the Doctor Ordered: A Taste of Chinese Medicine

I haven’t been writing because I haven’t been eating much. I got a type of stomach flu last week that I haven’t had for over ten years. I’ll spare you the gory details beyond stating how thankful I am for the design of Korean bathrooms where cleaning them involves merely hosing them down with the shower head.
There is something about living in a foreign land that makes a person more susceptible to illness. My girlfriend said she got sick a lot when she lived in Canada. And I’ve gotten sick more and more often in Korea, as have other foreigners.
Whenever I’m sick, my girlfriend usually goes to the local pharmacist and tells him my symptoms. She then returns with a combination of modern and traditional Chinese medicine. I myself, having taken a pharmacology course or two in college, am a bit skeptical of Chinese medicine. My feeling is that if it’s just folklore and hasn’t been tested using the scientific method, it’s no different from Western traditional medicine, which involved bleeding people and drinking Coca Cola (which was first introduced as a medicine).
Chinese medicine in Korea is concocted in different ways. It usually involves a granular powder around the texture of coffee grounds, black pellets which look like rabbit droppings, and the famous black juice.
The powder and black pellets are easy to take. It’s the black juice that can be tough to get down, especially if you’re having trouble even keeping down apple juice.
Nonetheless, in my opinion, it tastes better than the liquid medicines doctors prescribe in America. This black juice I had last week was more palatable than the ones before. It had the usual taste of earthy ginseng mixed with ashtray (I wonder if that’s the mythical stag horn I’m tasting). Yet it was countered by an aromatic cinnamon kick. And it actually settled my stomach.
I don’t argue with my girlfriend as much about Chinese medicine as I used to. I’ll take it whenever I’m sick. She’s starting to accept the aspirin I give her when she gets headaches. I’m still skeptical about its effects. Yet whenever I am running a fever, it tends to break only a few hours after chasing the granules and rabbit pellets with the black juice.
July 11, 2006
Toothpaste for That Forest Fresh Feeling

While I was packing my bags to come to Korea two years ago, I was asking my old friend Christina what all I needed to bring with me. The three major things she said were deodorant, condoms, and toothpaste.
Now, she was right about deodorant. It is darn difficult to find. I have found some women’s anti-perspirant at a convenience store, and I’ve seen the nasty Speed Stick deodorant (not anti-perspirant) that high school jocks use on sale at the black markets in Namdaemun. Yet all my personal anti-perspirant I get from care packages from my family.
Condoms are findable here and are getting moreso. Yet the quality and variety aren’t that great. That’s another item I order by mail from the U.S.
Now toothpaste. There’s no shortage of toothpaste. People are passionate about oral care in Korea. Christina recommended the toothpaste because Korean toothpaste, according to her, “tastes terrible.”
So I stocked up on toothpaste and didn’t try any Korean toothpaste for over a year. But when my first batch ran out, my girlfriend lent me hers, and it wasn’t that bad.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of toothpaste flavors. The mint flavor in mint toothpaste does not taste like mint. It tastes like nasty ass toothpaste. Why does mint flavor not really taste like mint? I don’t like chocolate chip mint ice cream because it doesn’t taste like real mint. It tastes like toothpaste with chocolate chips in it. Grape flavor doesn’t taste like the grapes I grew up with. It tastes like the grotesque purple gum that the coach gave out to everyone in little league. It’s not grape flavor. It’s purple flavor.
I had run out of my Colgate Tartar Control yet again, so I grabbed for my girlfriend’s toothpaste. I noticed it had a much more pleasant exotic taste, something I really liked. I looked on the tube and saw a picture of what looked like a pine tree. I asked her to confirm my suspicions.
“Yes, it’s pine tree flavored.”
HA!
It’s the first toothpaste I’ve tried that’s flavored as a scent rather than the taste of a food. And it is a refreshing taste and sensation. It’s not that painful Mr. Freeze feeling that Mega-Mint toothpastes attack you with. It’s smooth.
I’ve never really enjoyed a toothpaste, thus it was hard for my mother to make me brush my teeth. Brushing my teeth was a chore before. Now I look forward to being transported to a Yukon evergreen forest through my mouth whenever I brush my teeth.
July 11, 2006
Kimbap — In Convenient Triangle Shape

These things can be intimidating if you don’t know what you’re doing. Yet these are great inventions in South Korean junk food. It’s called “samgak kimbap” 삼각김밥, or triangle kimbap.
It’s the most basic of basic convenience store snacks. What makes them interesting is that they come in many flavors. New flavors are popping up all the time. You can get Jeonju bibimbap, tuna and mayonnaise, tuna and gochujang, tuna barbecue (my favorite), tuna with fish eggs, charcoal grilled galbi, chicken galbi, crab salad —
When I don’t have time to eat breakfast at home, I tend to get one or two of these things to rip open before class. And as far as junk food goes, they’re not that unhealthy. And at 500 to 700 won a piece, they’re economical.
The trick is opening them, which is something I’m still trying to master. You have to get a fresh samgak for it to work right. But it’s always a crap shoot as to whether you have a fresh one. Busy convenience stores tend to have them in the morning. The samgak I’m having for breakfast here is galbi jjim.
First, peel the strip down the middle, carefully tearing through the label.

Hold the samgak firmly in one hand and grab a bottom corner with the other. Tug it off. Then pull off the other one. Carefully.

If you’re successful, you’ll have a complete samgak without any of the very salty crunchy seaweed (kim 김) coming off.

Inside is a molded triangle of rice with a dent in the middle. In this case, it’s filled with a galbi jjim mixture. Basically it’s cheap (read: throwaway) cuts of pork mixed with spicy sauce. It’s pretty good.

Some people like to heat them in the microwave first. I like to have them straight. And with so much rice in there, it’ll fill you up for a while. Now, if someone could take this to the next logical step and make samgak sushi.

July 11, 2006
Fish Noodles — On a Stick!
This seems to be the most common street food in Korea. There are others, but selling fish noodles, or odeng 오댕, seems easy to do. It’s low maintenance.
Put noodles on stick.
Stick in broth.
Turn on heat.
Odeng is pretty good unless you don’t like seafood. It tastes similar to sweet imitation crab meat. It comes in noodle form and shaped into sausage form. It’s great in soups and stir fries. And it’s a great street snack on a chilly winter day in downtown Seoul.
The method for eating odeng on the street is something I’m still trying to get used to. In other countries I have lived in and visited, you go up to the vendor, pay the money, the vendor gives you your order. At odeng stands, a patron walks up to the vendor, grabs a stick of odeng, and starts eating without even talking to the vendor.
Something in my primieval psyche tells me that’s rude.
Basically, you tell the vendor how many you ate, or the vendor looks at the number of sticks next to you. Yes, you could be a jerk and put your stick in front of the other guy while he’s not looking.
Eun Jeong and I were walking around Myeong-dong in downtown Seoul, and we were both peckish. This one odeng stand had a very hot spicy broth. The vendors also give patrons paper cups of the broth to drink. What I liked about this stand was that it had a crock of some soy sauce and onion based paste that I brushed onto my odeng with a paint brush. That was darn good and bumped up the heat another level.

A little while later, Eun Jeong wanted to try these other things. I had always seen them but was afraid to eat them because I had no idea what their content was (yeah, me afraid). She told me that it was flour and fish mixed with other ingredients, shaped, and deep fried.

“Like a fish noodle?”
“No, not a noodle.”
“But it’s like fried pasta.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
It takes a lot of patience to be my girlfriend.

We tried this one stand that had signs saying that it was once featured on TV. Almost every restaurant in Seoul has been featured on TV.

There was a variety of these things on display. We bought one flavored with Korean peppers. The vendor took one and added a line of ketchup and a line of honey mustard and handed it to us.
It actually tasted pretty good, even with the ketchup and honey mustard. I would order another one of those.

Of course, poor Eun Jeong complains that most of the pictures I take of her are of her eating.
July 11, 2006
Dosirak – Just Don’t Call It a Bento Box!

Last year, my girlfriend, Eun Jeong, and I went out for dinner. At the restaurant, she was thrilled that this one item was on the menu. Instead of rice, she ordered it. The waiter came back with a thin metal cigar box. Inside was rice, shredded dried seaweed, vegetables, some gochujang, and an egg. It was like a tiny bibimbap. Eun Jeong replaced the lid, picked it up, and shook the heck out of it. The result was a scary gloppy mess that tasted divine.
She said that it was a reminder of her childhood. It’s also a new trend that has been popping up in Korean restaurants, playing on Koreans’ nostalgia. I like to compare it to that upscale peanut butter and jelly restaurant in New York City. When Eun Jeong was growing up, this was the lunchbox her mother prepared for her. She said it was a sort of bento box. But “bento” is a Japanese word. God forbid you use a Japanese word in Korea. In Korean, it called a dosirak 도시락.
As Korea became richer and more cosmopolitan, dosiraks were considered the province of poor people and not sophisticated. But now, as with the peanut butter and jelly restaurant, they have been given a more sophisticated interpretation as a whimsical appetizer to have with your meal.
Personally, I love these, and I order them whenever I see them on the menu. They cost around $2, and they’re a lot of fun. How much food do you shake at the table before eating?
This is also a good example of the difference between Korean and Japanese food. A Japanese bento box is beautifully arranged delicate items to be picked up gingerly with chopsticks, each item having about as much flavor as newspaper. A Korean dosirak is not pretty. It’s down right f’ugly. You shake it and scoop the contents in your mouth with a spoon. And it again proves my hypothesis that the tastiest foods in the world are the sloppiest. Just for fun, I may shake a Japanese bento box the next time I get one, just to see people’s shock.

Now, yes, I have offended a few Korean friends by calling it a “bento box.” But I have seen it on menus as a “benddo” 벤또. I don’t care. If I see either on a menu, I get pensive like Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation” and think, “It’s Dosirak Time!”
July 4, 2006
Fiery Chicken Feet
Before you turn up your nose and say “gross,” remember that the chicken wing was also a much neglected part of the bird until a restaurant in Buffalo did something special to them.
My first experience with chicken feet (“Dalk Bal” 닭발) in Korea was not spectacular. We were having a beer at our favorite drinking hole when the proprietor offered some chicken feet that a neighboring restaurant had given her. They tasted okay but were a little off. Immediately I identified it as freezer burn.
Unlike my friend who was with me, I gave them another try much later. Chicken feet in Korea are done like hot wings in America, but the sauce is much smokier, sweeter, and hotter. And there are no vegetables or blue cheese dressing to take the heat off.
I have grown to really like these. The flesh around the foot, especially the padding, it fatty and matches the flavor of hot sauce well. Besides, you can get immature and make your chicken feet do rude gestures.
Tonight, my friends took us to a restaurant that was famous for chicken feet. Usually, it’s bar food and not something that would be considered a meal, but this restaurant has done it somehow.
Looking at the patrons’ faces, it seemed like it was something people do on a dare than a “Hey honey, let’s take the kids out for burn-your-butt-off chicken feet tonight” meal.

The first sign of things to come was the complimentary plastic gloves for protection.

Then a soup came out. It was a simple chicken broth with dried seaweed, green onion, and gochugaru (red pepper powder). It was surprisingly spicy for such a mild soup. My friends said it was to build up your tolerance for the main dish to come.

Some rice bowls came out with julienned dried seaweed on them, along with plates of stir-fried spicy chicken gizzards. We mixed the gizzards with the rice and wrapped them in more dried seaweed given to us in individual packets. This brought the spice level up another few Kelvins.

Then the chicken feet came out. These were different from others that I’ve had in that they were barbequed. The bones were also crunchier than the ones I’ve had at beer hofs. The women with us showed a way to properly debone the feet.

After doing a few like that, we all abandoned convention and just sucked the meat off the leg bone.
Even though we were sweating, blowing our noses (usually a rude gesture at the table in Korea), and I personally had tears running down my face, we ordered another batch.
I have experimented with making my own chicken feet at home. I got a big bag of them for only 1,000 won ($1).

There is not much information on the internet on how to make them. I’ve called Korean friends for ideas, and most were clueless. The best suggestion I got was to boil them first to make the toe bones softer.
Before boiling, though, there is much preparation. The raw chicken feet come with some skin that has to be peeled off. The claws have to be clipped to. This was the first food I’ve prepared that needed a pedicure. I also clipped off any blemishes, usually around the padding.
When I boiled them, I discovered another great thing. Chicken feet make a good chicken stock. It didn’t occur to me that they’re full of cartilage, which is what makes a stock a stock.
Now that they were soft, I wanted to make them crispy on the outside. In the future, I’ll skip this step. Chicken feet explode when deep fried — violently. I had a frying screen to block the oil, and the oil exploded so violently, it knocked the screen off.

In the end, the experiment was a bust, but I did figure out how to make the famous spicy sweet garlicky Yangnyeom 양겸 sauce that comes with much fried chicken and chicken feet. Now, I threw this together, so I don’t remember any measurements. I started sweating some chopped garlic and onion in a pan. To it I added a big dollop of gochujang (red pepper paste), a drizzle of sesame oil, and a little honey to sweeten it and give it a glaze and let it simmer until it became saucy. That was it, really. It also makes a great barbeque sauce.

But, yeah, the chicken feet were too hard from frying.

July 2, 2006