Food in Korea

Okay, so you have probably been wondering when I was going to tell you about the food in Korea, well here it is. Let's start of with Korean food and then I will talk about Western food in Korea and how it has a twist to it.
Korea food for the most part is very spicey hot. There is chili pepper in almost every food. This makes eating for me very difficult because I can't eat spicey food, as I feel like my mouth is burning off. The other Korean food is seafood of sorts, which I can't eat also, as I feel really sick after eating it. What is left is a few foods that I find edible. One of my favourites is sum-gulp-sol. This is pork that is cut up and given to you raw so that you can cook it on the grill in front of you. You can also add garlic slices and vegetables to the grill to cook. Once cooked you take a piece of meat, dip it into a seasoning sauce, and add a leaf of lettuce, then add a cooked garlic piece that is dipped into a bean paste. Wrap it all up and shove it into your mouth. It's very tastey. Another food that is simular to this galbi. This is marinated and is either beef or pork. It is cooked the same way and is eaten the same way as sum-gulp-sol. Yet another good food is a type of soup that I call 'bone soup.' The reason for the name is because it is pieces of meat that still have the bone on them and they are boiled to make the broth for the soup. Then spring onions are added and some salt and pepper. Then some rice and noodles. It is very tastey. Other than that I don't really eat much Korean food.

The picture on the left is of sum-gulp-sol as it is cooking. As you can see there are a number of different side dishes. In the right corner there is a dish with red something, that is kim-chi.

The picture on the right is of sum-gulp-sol ready to be eaten.

Along with your meal you will get a number of side dishes. These can range from potato salad, different sorts of vegetables with hot chili sauce on them, peanuts, cooks chestnuts, kim-chi, shrimp, or squid rings. They also have been known to serve an acorn jelly thing. Of all these side dishes usually they are never eaten totally. It seems like such a waste to me, but they come with every Korean meal.

A note on kim-chi. Kim-chi is a fermented Korean radish. It is fermented in a number of unknown ingrediants accept for the chili peppers. I have found this to be very untasty. Kim-chi comes in all forms of vegetables and I'm sure that Koreans could kim-chi anything if they wanted to. There is one sort of kim-chi that I have actually found good in taste recently. I'm not sure of the vegetable, but it is very crunchy like a pickle and has a very good taste to it.

This is a picture of the pots that Koreans use to ferment the kim-chi.

Oh, let me not forget that rice is a big thing in Korea. It's not like rice that we have in Canada. The rice here sticks, hence the name sticky rice. I always wondered how people in the movies could eat rice with chopsticks and I have found the answer. The rice can be very bland I have found and when I'm at home I add salt and sometimes soy sauce.

Other foods that can be found in Korea are Chinese and Western food. Of the chinese food I like the black sauce for noodles. I havin't pin-pointed the taste, but it's not spicey and it is very tastey. Another one is sweet and sour pork.

The Western foods that can be found here are pizza and chicken. Pizza is funny because one of the things that is put on pizza under the cheese is corn. Can you believe it?! Anyways, it's not actually all that bad and you really don't notice the taste. Something very strange that I have found on pizza is marichino cherries on a Hawiian pizza. That was a surprise to me. Also you can order a potato pizza. That's right, potato pizza. They put wedges of potato and a little mayonaise and ketchup together under the cheese. It's actually quite tastey. Yet another creation is a sweet potato pizza. They have mashed sweet potato and it is places in a ring around the outside of the pizza in front of the crust. I thought it was very strange, but it's actually really good. Last is ordering cheese crust. You can get it for very cheap here and because it's so cheap I get it on every pizza that I order. Chicken is pretty basic. You can get original or you can get extremely spicey.

This is a picture of that hawaiian pizza with the cherries on top.

Last I would like to talk about McDonalds. I know, I know, it's McDonalds, but there are quite a few differences. The first one is that the fries are almost always under salted. The second is that you can order different set menus, such as the shrimp burger, or the extra spicey chicken set, or the set that is like the quarter pounder burger only it has different toppings. Even the children's menu is different. The children have a choice between a normal soft drink, juice, or a yogurt drink, they get to choose a desert of yogurt tube or ice cream, and on top of that they get a toy.

Soda pop flavours is where I would like to end this posting. When you go to a fast food place you can get usually one of three drinks: coke, cider (sort of like sprit and ginger ale mixed together), and orange fanta. If it's not coke it's pepsi and if it's not cider it's sprit and if it's not orange fanta it's pineapple fanta. You are lucky if they offer mountain dew because that has just started to be something you can get.