In this cultural post, I want to talk about the food culture in Korea. The food culture of South Korea mainly comes from the former Korea, which has been generated before the split, and it is deeply influenced by the Chinese food culture. Food culture refers to the history, characteristics, and habits of a country and has a strong regional characteristic, which can fully reflect the country’s cultural feature. Kimchi, cold noodles, soybean paste soup has become the Korean symbol.
Korean diet is inclined to be light-flavored. They rarely add oil and monosodium glutamate in the food. Side dishes are mainly cold mixed vegetables. The most famous dish in South Korea is kimchi, which is spicy cabbage. In South Korea, children start to eat spicy cabbage and other kimchi in a young age, making it a national necessity. Korean barbecue is also a very important cuisine. Its main ingredients are beef with high protein and low cholesterol, which makes it healthier and taste better. South Koreans like to eat "spicy", but compared with China's Sichuan, Hunan spicy, South Koreans are more inclined to "cold spicy", and no "ma". Cold noodle is undoubtedly the best representative of "cold and spicy", and Korean people love to eat cold noodles even in the wintertime.
Now I am going to introduce different types of Korean cuisine in their everyday life. The first is rice. The staple food in South Korea is rice, which is the same as in northern China. Korea is located in northeast Asia, and its climate conditions are very similar to the three provinces in northeast China and Shandong province. In South Korea, in addition to rice, barley, sorghum and millet are widely grown. Korean people like to eat rice and also all kinds of rice mixed with the grain rice. They also like to add a variety of vegetables to rice and mix with the spicy soybean paste, which is known as "Korean bibimbap." The second essential cuisine is the Korean Sauce dishes. Sauce is one of the most important flavoring in Korea. It is one of the three side dishes on the Korean table, together with soup and kimchi. In Korea, there are a large variety of food cooked with sauce, and the sauce can be divided into Doenjang, chili sauce, barbecue sauce, soy sauce. The flavor of Doenjang is the most unique, but its ingredient is also the most nutritious. In South Korea, there is a famous Doenjang production base - Chunchang county, which is also known as the "Doenjang village". According to the survey, one third of the Korean sauce products is from here, and it is also home to the largest number of South Korea's long-lived people.
The third essential dish is soup. Soup is an important dish on the dining table and cannot be replaced. Among them, soybean paste soup, spicy cabbage soup and Tofu soap are most famous. For Korean people, they will have a bowl of kelp soup on their birthday. On the New Year’s Day, rice cake soup is served to visiting relatives and friends. This tradition shows the importance of soup in the daily life of Korean people.
Korean food culture has a long history and has undergone a thousand years of evolution. Now it has formed a food culture and industrial chain with local characteristics, which has a great influence in Asia and even the world. Today, Korean food culture has become an important part of the mainstream food culture in the world.
Comments
Hi Raymond, good post! I enjoyed reading your post. It is interesting to see you comparing Korean spicy with our Chinese spicy. But for the third essential dish, are you sure miso soup is one of the Korean famous soup? I think it's a symbol of Japan, not South Korea.