As the cold winter weather approaches, I am craving some hot, spicy food to warm me up! Korea is home to many types of spicy foods, for all the spicy food lovers out there. Using chilli pepper as their main source of spice, many dishes exude hot flavor from their smell alone.
Starting with my favorite spicy dish in korea: tteokbokki! This spicy rice cake dish was mentioned in a previous blog as it is a common street food, but it deserves another spot on this blog as well. However, this style of tteokbokki is a little different as it is up to the customer to cook it however they like. There are many more toppings you could add: scallions, sausages, fish cake, beef, eggs, and (my favorite) ramen noodles. The toppings add a new layer of flavor to the spiciness and get your chopsticks reaching for the food before you know it. It also facilitates a great sense of bonding between the people sharing the dish because you all will be sniffling but also enjoying the spiciness of tteokbokki. If you are extra hungry, it is possible to ask for rice after you’ve finished the dish. The waiters will typically mix the rice into the sauce and cook it until it becomes crispy on the bottom.
A dish meant for seafood lovers is nakji bokkeum or stir-fried mini-octopus. For this dish, the octopus is cooked with chilli paste, garlic, and soy sauce until the sauce becomes thick. Since it is spicy, it is often eaten with rice to dilute the strong salty and spicy flavor. Sometimes, people like to call it the “rice thief” because of how much rice they eat with this dish. It’s easy to keep eating when the flavors are so stimulating!
While I wait for summer to come again, I would like to introduce a dish commonly eaten in the summer to cool down: naengmyun (cold noodles). These noodles are different from the noodles you are familiar with, as they are made of buckwheat and starch from potatoes. Because the noodles are so chewy, many people prefer to have their noodles cut before they eat it (especially children and me). Thus, they are much chewier and harder to bite off. The noodles are also served with spicy chilli paste sauce and a little bowl of beef broth to mix in. In the winter, there are chunks of ice in the broth to help you cool down from the hot weather.
Let’s return to something warm again. Jjamppong is a hot soup/noodle dish that is very common in Korea. It is typically served at “Chinese” restaurants in Korea. The hot oil is the main thing that makes this dish spicy, but the variety of seafood (mussels, shrimp, squid, etc) in the soup makes the spiciness more tolerable. It is really nice to eat during the winter when it is cold as the heat and the spice makes you sweat.
So there it is! All the spicy foods you need to try on your next visit to Korea!
Image Sources:
https://www.tasteatlas.com/nakji-bokkeum
https://www.maangchi.com/photo/bibim-naengmyeon-lunch
https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/jjamppong