14 Classic Korean Recipes For Beginners (2024)

FAQs

What Korean food should I try for the first time? ›

Bibimbap, a beloved Korean classic, is all about hearty satisfaction. This dish showcases a vibrant array of fresh vegetables artfully arranged on a bed of rice, topped with a perfectly fried egg.

A typical Korean meal consists of a bowl of rice, a bowl of soup or stew, and some side dishes as accompaniments. But within that basic structure, there is a deliciously wide variation of dishes for every season and palate.

Porridge: Juk or jook, a rice porridge, is a popular breakfast dish, often served with savory or sweet toppings. Gyeran-mari: This is a rolled omelet with vegetables and sometimes meat. Bread and Pastries: In modern times, you can also find bread, toast, and pastries like red bean buns.

One of the most famous and iconic foods in Korea is kimchi. Kimchi is a traditional Korean side dish made from fermented vegetables, most commonly Napa cabbage and Korean radishes, seasoned with various spices, including chili pepper, garlic, ginger, and fish sauce.

Kimchi, soup, stew, & sidedishes. With rice almost always comes kimchi and a soup or a stew (and sometimes both). These three things are essential to Korean homestyle meals, which are usually rounded out with the sidedishes, aka banchan.

Bibimbap is a Korean rice dish topped with an assortment of fresh and seasonal vegetables, fried eggs, minced beef, and other ingredients. Along with kimchi and bulgogi, it is one of the three most popular Korean foods outside of Korea.

Most Simple Korean Meals: Rice + Soup or Stew + Noodles (dry or soup) + Kimchi Rice + Main Meat or Seafood Dish + Kimchi. Bibimbap or Rice Bowls + Kimchi. One dish meals (Kimchi fried rice , Curry rice, Kongnamul bap ) + soup (optional) + Kimchi and/or pickled radish (Danmuji)

Korean comfort foods include dishes like Kimchi Jjigae (kimchi stew), Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly), Dolsot Bibimbap (hot stone pot rice), Tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), Sundubu Jjigae (spicy tofu stew), Japchae (glass noodle stir-fry), Kimbap (sushi rolls), and Hoddeok (sweet pancakes).

Beef is the most prized of all, with the cattle holding an important cultural role in the Korean home. Beef is prepared in numerous ways today, including roasting, grilling (gui) or boiling in soups. Beef can also be dried into yukpo, a type of po, as with seafood, called eopo.

Customize Your Own Bibimbap Bowls

It must be noted, though, that bibimbap by nature is quite healthy with rice and colorful vegetables plus meat, fish, egg, or tofu—providing a low-calorie dish that is high in fiber, carbohydrates, and protein.

What Korean food do foreigners like? ›

According to the survey, Korean-style chicken (29.4%) was the most frequently consumed Korean food by foreigners in the past year, followed by kimchi (28.6%) and Korean ramen (26.9%). In terms of preference, Korean-style chicken (16.5%), ramen (11.1%), and kimchi (9.8%) were the top choices.

Banchan are served in small portions, meant to be finished at each meal and replenished during the meal if not enough. Usually, the more formal the meals are, the more banchan there will be. Jeolla province is particularly famous for serving many different varieties of banchan in a single meal.

Banchan is typically served first, before the main dishes arrive, so they're often mistaken for appetizers.

All the dishes might be spread across the table, but in Korean food culture, you must start with the soup. You can serve yourself some soup using the serving spoon in the communal bowl. In traditional Korean food culture, you don't lift the bowl off the table in a formal setting.