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meohmy85
Joined: 23 Nov 2009
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 Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:52 am Post subject: Korean food |
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Should I start eating Korean food now, to get used to the differences???
or is the food good? |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:55 am Post subject: |
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Start adding a little kimchi to everything you eat, add more progressively.
You can also eat it on the side.
If you can't find Kimchi buy a jar of sourkraut at you local grocers add some hot pepper flakes and garlic to it and pretend it's kimchi. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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I'm guessing you are still at home...
I'd suggest browsing through the internet for Korean recipes and make a list of things that appeal to you. You can also check the threads about people's favorite Korean foods here on this site.
'Good' is a pretty ambiguous concept, particularly when it comes to food. Does Silk Worm Soup appeal to you? Snacking on chicken feet? Eating whole baby birds? Like all cuisines, Korean food has a lot of things that probably won't appeal to many people who did not grow up eating a particular dish.
It's probably fair to say that most of us here enjoy eating Korean-style meats--the different kinds of kalbi (vegetarians excepted). Fewer when it comes to other things like soup and vegetables (weeds in a bowl as some call one of the most popular dishes).
Consider packing the herbs and spices you need to make the special comfort foods you think you will miss the most, since those are sometimes hard to come by. (You can ask here on this site what spices are available.) If you want to go to the time, effort and expense, you can make almost everything from home and not eat much Korean food at all. |
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SeoulMan99
Joined: 02 Aug 2009
Location: Seoul
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climber159
Joined: 02 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| I wouldn't bother trying to adapt yourself to Korean food prior to arriving in K-land. Korean food is much better and MUCH cheaper in Korea and there are plenty of Western restaurants and supermarkets with a wide selection of foods to tie you over during the process. Really, stop over-thinking the transition. |
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Hindsight
Joined: 02 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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meohmy85 wrote:
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Should I start eating Korean food now, to get used to the differences???
or is the food good? |
This depends. Have you ever eaten spicy Mexican food? Szechuan Chinese food? Cajun food? Any food with hot peppers in it? Do you like to add hot sauce to your food? Have you ever had raw oysters?
How about ice cream? Chocolate? Ritz and Saltine crackers? Or for the Brits, Digestives? How about 7Up? KitKat bars?
Koreans believe their food is different (and better) than every other country in the world. It's not. A surprising number of products on the store shelves are copies of Western products with Korean names. The hot peppers they worship are native to the Americas, and Americans grow much hotter peppers than Koreans. They add sweet corn to just about everything. Corn is native to America, and the cans of corn often come from the U.S.
As to raw fish, many cultures eat some forms of raw fish, but usually after it is dead. However, because of the dangers of hepatitis A and red tide, this practice has abated some over the years. You need to get a hepatitis A shot now, well before your arrival in Korea, for protection. They may feed you raw fish the first day you are there.
If you do not like to eat Koren food, here is what you do:
When they take you out to eat at a Korean restaurant, ask your co-teachers if they studied English in a Western country? Inquire how long and where. Then asked them what they ate during that time. If they say hamburgers and fried chicken (possibly even that is not true), ask if that was all they ate, and whether they like your country's food. My co-teacher said American food is greasy and he ate rice and ramen noodles the whole time he was studying abroad. This is a common answer. Ask them to define greasy, with examples. You will be surprised. The best time to inquire as to their eating habits while abroad is while they are treating you to samgyeopsal, lightly grilled pork fat with a little meat. Samgyeopsal is bacon without all that nasty flavor from curing. Crisp samgyeopsal is thrown out as inedible. It must be nice and soft and greasy. If they give you a piece that is all fat, consider it an honor. Pig fat is considered a health food in Korea. Spam is considered a delicacy here, suitable for presenting in gift packs on special holidays. Cuts of beef that are 70 percent fat can cost $15 or $30 a pound here.
If that is the answer you get, you are under no further moral obligation to eat Korean food just to be polite, as they did not make an effort to try or understand Western food when they were abroad. Many Koreans believe it is un-Korean to eat un-Korean food, at home or abroad. Tell them that you consider it unpatriotic to eat foreign food, and that if you eat Korean food while in Korea it will make you less of an Australian, or Brit, or Canadian, or Kiwi or Yankee or whatever. You will bring great shame upon your fellow countrymen if you eat Korean food. They may not even let you back in the country when your contract expires.
Using irony with Koreans might not work. So more direct methods may be needed to get your message across.
When you eat with Koreans they will feed you very mild raw green peppers and kimchi with red peppers. (They also eat raw garlic that is almost tasteless.) They will warn you that it is very hot, or in the case of kimchi, very, very hot. When you taste it, you will wonder A) if they're nuts, or B) if you should tell them it is not hot, or C) if you should tell them it is very, very hot, and Koreans are very, very brave eaters, or D) you should tell them it is very, very, very delicious (this may get you a raise).
The polite answer is C or D, of course. I, however, recommend you bring a bottle of hot sauce with you from home. Tabasco will do, but if you can find something hotter, that might be better. When they warn you the food is hot, try some and then pull out your bottle of hot sauce and add several drops. Tell them it needed to be just a little hotter. Then eat it with gusto.
Chances are, they will not get the idea. The next time you dine with them they will again warn you the food is very, very hot. If you are in Korea for 10 years, the Koreans will warn you every time you eat with them that the food is hot, probably too hot for you, a feeble foreigner (they don't see anything wrong with insulting foreigners or foreign food).
This gets a little old. So bring a bottle of hot sauce with you every time you go out to eat with Koreans. When they warn you the food is very hot, add a liberal dose to your food, then offer to do the same to their food, warning them first that it is very hot. If they accept, watch them grimace and spit the food out. Most Koreans find American hot sauce to be way, way, way too hot.
The next time they go out to eat, two alternatives may occur: A) They will not invite you out, or B) They will invite you out, and again warn you that the food is very hot.
So you will need plenty of hot sauce. Tabasco can be found here, but it is way over priced and not really all that hot. Just bring a couple of dozen of those 3 for a dollar bottles of hot sauce with you.
Oh, one more word of advice. If a Korean asks you to help a student prepare for an English competition, and the child does not win first place, DO NOT go out to dinner with them to celebrate.
If your co-teachers make the extraordinary effort to take you to a restaurant serving Western food, this may not be an improvement. In the vast hinterlands beyond Seoul most people who prepare foreign foods have never been to the respective country, assume that foreign food tastes yucky, cannot read a cookbook, and if the food tastes strange they assume this is normal. Or they make some weird concoction, often involving corn and ketchup, and call it foreign food. For foreign food they typically quadruple the price. The "Mexican" food is some Korean's fantasy of what food in Mexico, a country they probably can't even find on a map, tastes like. It mainly involves smearing barbecue sauce (a condiment unknown in Mexico) with lots of red peppers on chicken. Chinese food in Korea is Korean food served on red plates in a room with red wallpaper. However, attitudes toward foreign food, at least when it is served in overpriced restaurants, are starting to change. Koreans assume the more expensive something it is, the better it is.
Oh, I ate in Korean restaurants in America long before I came here. It was better than Korean food in Korea. So this may not prepare you. But if you want to prepare yourself for drinking soju, get some pure grain alcohol and cut it with lots of water. It doesn't replicate the flavor exactly, since it is actually made from grain, though. For Maple Soju, add a drop of corn syrup for flavoring.
If you want to prepare yourself for Korean coffee, get yourself a small bottle of instant coffee, a five pound bag of Cremora and a 10 pound bag of sugar. Mix. Put a spoonful in a tiny paper cup and add 3 ounces of hot water. Enjoy.
Probably the best thing you can do to prepare is simply learning the names of Korean dishes. They put a lot of little plates of food on the table, but there is a rather limited variety, which is served over and over and over. If you can say, oh, that's ..... when it is put in front of you, they will be impressed, though perhaps also a bit disappointed. Perhaps you should pretend to be surprised the first time, and then identify all the dishes the second time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_food
Many people feel compelled to pretend they like the food here, and after a while feel there must be something wrong with them if they do not understand the virtues of Korean food. It's not you, it's the food.
But if, once you get here, you genuinely enjoy Korean food, that's fine.
Oh, and whatever you do, do not let Koreans read this post. Koreans have no sense of humor.
You'll see. |
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Hightop
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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| ^^ Post of the week. Essential n00b reading. |
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banjois
Joined: 14 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:07 pm Post subject: |
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| post of the year, thus far |
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curiousaboutkorea
Joined: 21 Jan 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:18 am Post subject: |
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| climber159 wrote: |
| there are plenty of Western restaurants |
I find the "Western" food here to be more foreign to a Westerner's tastebuds than the Korean food. |
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climber159
Joined: 02 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:48 am Post subject: |
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| curiousaboutkorea wrote: |
| climber159 wrote: |
| there are plenty of Western restaurants |
I find the "Western" food here to be more foreign to a Westerner's tastebuds than the Korean food. |
I don't. Pizza Hut tastes like pizza Hut, Quizno's tastes like Quizno's, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, McDonalds, even Outback as terrible as it is in the USA. |
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balzor
Joined: 14 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:49 pm Post subject: Re: Korean food |
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| meohmy85 wrote: |
Should I start eating Korean food now, to get used to the differences???
or is the food good? |
just go try it, there are so many things to eat. I don't like some Korean foods, including Kimchi, but most foods are pretty good and the price is generally cheap. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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some of it you may not like, but remember there's a great variety of korean restaurants, serving quite different dishes: they aren't all bibimbap and samgyupsal places
i recommend you try:
1. haemul tang
2. chuncheon dukalbi
3. gamja tang
4. soondae gook
those are hearty korean meals of quality, plus don't miss lighter, lunch fare:
5. kalguksu
6. nangmyeon
7. mayoon tang |
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maingman
Joined: 26 Jan 2008
Location: left Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 7:13 pm Post subject: , |
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climber159 wrote:
Korean food is much better and MUCH cheaper in Korea and there are plenty of Western restaurants and supermarkets with a wide selection of foods   |
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Hindsight
Joined: 02 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:07 am Post subject: |
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climber159 wrote:
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I don't. Pizza Hut tastes like pizza Hut, Quizno's tastes like Quizno's, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, McDonalds, even Outback as terrible as it is in the USA. |
I wouldn't know. The only one on the list I have been to in Korea is McDonald's and most of the items on the menu are Korean concoctions, such as bulgogi burgers and squid rings. There have been no McDonalds in any of the cities I have lived in in Korea, but I do have a Big Mac when I get the chance in a big city, about once every two or three months. (Tip: If you like a little salt and pepper on your burger, bring your own.)
Heck, I've never even been to a Quizno's or Outback in the States, and hardly ever went to McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks. This is not my idea of fine dining.
Oh, I went to a Dunkin Donuts here once. I had a croissant and a coffee. The coffee was truck stop burnt rubber flavored, not the good Colombian bean stuff they sell in the States, and they served the croissant dry. I asked for some butter, they looked puzzled, and finally provided me with cream cheese. Cream cheese for a croissant? You don't need to be a graduate of the CIA to realize this won't work. Well, finding plain cream cheese in Korea back then was a remarkable feat in itself, but of more use on a bagel. They may know how to cook it, they may know how to serve it, but I don't think they know how to eat it.
I have seen some Pizza Huts. I did not eat in any of them. I rarely ate at a Pizza Hut in the States, and I am not about to spend $30 for Pizza Hut lunch that I cannot even recognize. Pizzas in Korea are not your Uncle Luigi's pizzas.
As to the rest on your list, I have seen Starbucks. There are lots of coffee shops now, if you want to pay $3 for a cup of coffee, which must seem reasonable to someone who is clueless about how to actually make coffee from beans. Or you can get a tiny paper cup of "coffee" from a street machine for 300 won. Sometimes it tastes pretty good.
I assume you live in Seoul. I live in Korea. They might as well be different countries. There have been no foreign food franchises in any of the cities in Korea I have lived in. The supermarkets have either no foreign food, or a tiny section with stuff like pork and beans for $3 a can, maybe some yellow mustard, a can of cocoa, a jar of foreign peanut butter. It is impossible to find a can of sweet peas in Korea; HomePlus had some for a couple of months, then dropped them. There are canned peas, but only suitable for pea shooters. There have been a small number of foreign restaurants or varying quality and recognizability, way too expensive for my limited means, or most Koreans.
If you do not live in Seoul or another big city, you must either go to a store in a big city like EMart or HomePlus, where they will have two or three feet of shelf space devoted to foreign food, including other Asian foods, or be lucky enough to be within an hour or two of a Costco, or order from the internet. And note that the Korean Costcos are not your American Costcos. You will find only a small fraction of the food items here. You will only find one or two varieties of Campbell's soup, for example. HomePlus has about six different Campbell's soups. When I have gone into supermarkets with Koreans they have generally been afraid to be seen even walking down the foreign food aisle. I am not joking.
But things are beginning to change. Sooner or later you will see more foreign food here. The trouble is, the driving force are advertisements by the huge international food corporations. Koreans are very conformist, so if the advertisement is designed properly, it is possible to sell foreign products here. It is even possible to convince them that inferior products are actually deluxe luxury products with snazzy ads. Koreans watch a ton of television. The TV is on constantly in their apartments and they even watch it riding on the bus. Ads are very powerful here. But this is not how a country should shape the evolution of its cuisine.
The expansion of fast food franchises selling bulgogi burgers or bulgogi pizza is hardly progress. But then the Korean food restaurants in Korea might as well all be one big franchise because wherever you go you get the same stuff. Koreans love consistency and conformity, or at least they say they do; they are probably afraid to say anything else.
Caveats:
Some poster will probably say all this is nonsense. But remember, I am not talking about Seoul. And many posters have never been out of Seoul.
There's plenty of Western type foods that are commonly available in Korea, particularly baked goods such as donuts, lots of fried chicken for 12,000 to 16,000 for a whole bird cut up into little pieces including the neck and back, lots of watermelon for sale in supermarkets or on streets, lots of Coke and bags of potato chips or Pringles, lots of canned tuna, and lots and lots of Spam. They have apples, oranges, onions, garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and stuff like that. So if that's what you consider Western food, Korea's got plenty of it.
The key variable is where you live. My impression is you need to live in a city of more than 1 million people to have some variety of Western eateries beyond McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins, which are fairly well established in cities of about a half a million. To Koreans, this must look like a veritable explosion of foreign food choices. |
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banjois
Joined: 14 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 6:35 am Post subject: |
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So it begins...
I'd taken the whole "Koreans and their spicy food" talk on here as a bit much, but I just got a nice note from the director of the school I'm starting with soon, and after discussing the curriculum and other things, this is how she ended it:
| Quote: |
| I didn't ask to you. do you like spicy food? I hope you are not picky about food, hahahaha. |
What's the right answer? "I DO like spicy food, but I've heard Korean food is VERY hot, so I hope I can deal with it ^^"? |
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