What is Korean Food?
Korean cuisine is famous for its delicious and flavourful food that often contains some type of vegetable, meat and rice or noodles. Like other Asian cultures, Koreans do not use a lot of salt when they cook. Their dishes are rather spicy or sweet (even a garlic baguette I tried was sweet). Many dishes consist of similar ingredients, for example, gochujang a Korean chilli paste or Doenjang, a fermented soybean paste are stable ingredients for many dishes. Although many dishes have similar ingredients, they still taste completely different and there are so many things to try. So when you visit South Korea it can be quite overwhelming trying to figure out what to order. Here are some of my favourite must-try Korean dishes.
1. Chicken and Beer (Chimaek 치맥)
Fried chicken and beer? In my opinion the best combination. This is definitely a dish you have to try at least once! Chicken and beer is also called Chimaek, which comes from Chicken + Maekju (Beer).
There are different types of fried chicken that you can usually order. Most of the time they are some variation of sweet or spicy (well like most food in Korea lol). If you’re not the biggest fan of spicy food try to find something like honey chicken, it’s usually more sweet than spicy. But when you’re in Korea you should get prepared for a little bit of spice once in a while.
If you’ve seen my post about Korean snacks, you’ve probably heard about the pickled radish (which is sooo delicious). Usually, that or other Korean side dishes are served with chimaek.
The portions are quite big, so it makes sense to just order the chicken for the table. My friends and I would just get two or three different types of chicken and maybe some fries with that (and obviously some beers!). Generally, in South Korea, you share a lot of food and it’s a better bet to just order different dishes to share them instead of every person ordering their own dish. That way you get to try so much more food and splitting the bill gets a lot cheaper too.
Also, when you order bottled beer, they often bring you small glasses for everyone so you can share. The beer bottles are bigger than they are in Europe but the beer is weaker. If you order tab beer you usually get your own bigger glass.
2. Spicy Stir-fried Chicken (Dakgalbi 닭갈비)
This is definitely a dish you have to try. But make sure to be at least two people or more – the portions are massive. Dakgalbi is spicy stir-fried chicken with noodles and sometimes topped with yummy things like cheese and rice cake. The first time I ate it, we had no idea what we were ordering. The restaurant my friends and I walked into gave us a little form to tick what ingredients we wanted and with the little English, they knew they tried to explain to us what we could order.
After ordering they brought us to a table with some type of hot plate in the middle. Our food was served in a huge pan and we would just eat out of it. Only after going to this place like twice, we realized that we could also grab some side dishes. In Korea, there are often side dishes like lettuce leaves or pickled radishes that you can serve yourself. If you’re unsure if you can just serve yourself, go and watch what everyone else around you is doing.
A delicious thing Koreans do is to grab some of the chicken and noodles and wrap it into a lettuce leave and then they put the whole little wrap directly into their mouth. It’s amazing because the lettuce is super refreshing and the spicy chicken tastes amazing with it (Koreans actually do the same thing at Korean BBQ but just with the meat, kimchi and ssamjang sauce).
If you don’t know what to order I would recommend trying to get some combination of chicken, Korean noodles (ramyeon noodles), cheese and rice cakes. I’ve tried Chinese glass noodles or chewy noodles but I did not like that combination as much. You can also order stuff like cabbage with it, but honestly, it’s a lot better if it’s just noodles, chicken and some cheese.
3. Pig’s Feet (Jokbal 족발)
This was one of these dishes that we just ordered without knowing what it was. My friend Grace and I really enjoyed the meal. We got a ton of side dishes and the meat (aka the pig’s feet) was delicious. I think we both found out after a few days or even weeks that what we ate was pig’s trotters. I know many Europeans are quite hesitant to try more unusual types of meats or parts of animals but I love that many other cultures really make use of every part of an animal and as long as it tastes delicious I don’t see a problem with eating it.
The story of how we discovered the restaurant in Gangnam was actually quite funny. Grace and I were walking around trying to find a place to have dinner, this is something I did often in Seoul – just walk around until some pictures catch your eye. Googling restaurants or trying to read what food they offered was usually really hard and too time-consuming. There are so many restaurants in some streets or even the same building that you can just stroll around and always find something great. Anyway, we were both hungry and trying to find something we liked. This older man smiled at us and started asking where we were from. I was about to ignore it because I thought he was hitting on us. Turns out he just wanted to tell us about his restaurant. When he started talking about how the recipe they use is from North Korea, Grace and I were kind of intrigued.
So we decided to give it a go and entered the restaurant, which reminded me a little of a canteen. But the restaurant was packed with so many people (a good sign). We just pointed at some pictures that looked delicious and they served us so many side dishes we didn’t even know where to start. Overall, I would really recommend you try this dish, even if it’s just for the experience.
4. Rice Cake with Creamy Tomato Sauce (Rose Tteokbokki 로제떡볶이)
I don’t know why, but apparently, a lot of Korean women really like rice cake (tteokbokki). And I don’t blame them because it is delicious! I tried to make some for my family at home (thanks to the Asian store I recently discovered) but they were not the biggest fans of the consistency. Maybe that was in the way I prepared it, or not every woman on this planet loves this dish.
Anyway, tteokbokki is usually served in a tomato sauce that is a bit spicy. Often they also add fish cake, which are so good together. Rose tteokbokki is a less spicy version of the popular dish. I would definitely recommend trying both but I had many friends who did not really like spicy food. So if you’re not the biggest fan of spicy food or you are craving something with a creamy sauce go and try this. It’s definitely a comfort food.
There was a place close to my language school which served rose tteokbokki. So we would sometimes go there and have lunch. The other benefit of this place, besides its location, was that they had screens with pictures of the dishes where you could directly order. That made the language barrier a lot easier to deal with.
4. Korean Pancakes (Pajeon 파전)
I love eating savoury and especially salty food. I know it’s not the healthiest but after spending many weeks in Seoul I was really craving something salty – and then I found Pajeon. It’s a bit of an omelette but with seafood or chives and it was perfect to satisfy my craving for salty food. I’ve tried the versions with potatoes, with seafood and the ones with chives. The chive pancakes are my absolute favourite, but the other two versions were also quite good.
The first time a friend and I got it at a random place in Myeong-dong for lunch and it was rather inexpensive. The second time, though, we were a bigger group and wanted to eat something before going to a Karaoke room. We ended up at this quite fancy restaurant and paid a lot more for the same dish. In the first place, they also cut the pancake, while in the fancy place we were struggling to grab pieces from it with our chopsticks.
Another day I really wanted to have Pajeon, while I was exploring the city on my own. So I walked around on the hunt for a restaurant that would serve these yummy pancakes. Once I found a restaurant I tried to explain in my little Korean that I wanted to get some pancakes. Luckily, we managed to communicate somehow. As usual, the portions are rather big, so if you’re eating alone you might not be able to finish it all.
5. Korean Pork Cutlet (Donkkaseu 돈까쓰)
Last but not least, the Korean Pork Cutlet. This one dish reminded me a little of cordon bleu but without the cheese. You can get it with rice and some type of sauce and vegetables, but there are also other variations of it. If you don’t like spicy food but are looking for yummy Korean food to try this might be a good dish for you to try.
The restaurant at our school had this pork cutlet in a few variations and I’ve tried a few different versions of it. I had it with rice and some type of curry but we’ve also been to a more fancy place where they give you some type of spray with some flavour or something in it (we didn’t really understand to be honest but it was good anyway).
Angela
Angela, the mastermind behind theslowtravelista, is a passionate traveler who embraces slow travel's essence. With a knack for immersing herself in diverse cultures, she treasures connections formed across the globe. Beyond her adventures, Angela's vibrant personality shines through her love for spontaneous hair changes, hitchhiking escapades, and culinary delights. Join her for travel insights, laughter, and unforgettable adventures.
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