Of course, as in many other countries, the cuisine is too rich and varied to capture in its entirety with a few generalizations. But that won't stop me!
Although the more rarefied examples of Korean cuisine can be quite delicate and sophisticated, the basic dishes that you see everywhere and that are a staple of home cooking are not terribly complex. I hesitate to use the term "unsophisticated", because it sounds pejorative. And I certainly don't mean to say that the food isn't delicious -- it is. But there isn't the kind of high aesthetics that you see, for example, in the best of French or Japanese cooking. Korean food is hearty and filling. Many of the best dishes, like good Mexican food, involve throwing a lot of ingredients together and then cooking them for a long time until they turn into a big flavorful saucy mush.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the meals we made at home recently provides a good illustration of the basic components of a simple Korean meal.
Each person is given an individual serving of rice and of soup -- the latter of which can come in a number of different guises. Each person also has a pair of chopsticks and a spoon. With a few exceptions, all the other food is shared out of common serving dishes. Unlike in Chinese or Japanese dining, the rice and soup bowls are never lifted off the table. Both the rice and the soup are generally eaten with the spoon. The chopsticks are used for eating the other food (except, of course, shared soups), which may be taken in mouthfuls straight from the serving dishes, or placed momentarily on a small plate or in the rice bowl.
Usually there are one or two largish centerpiece dishes, like the bulgogi pictured here. We can call those "main dishes". Everything else in the meal is "side dishes" (banchan 반찬). The number and variety of side dishes is staggering. At some meals, especially at the cheaper restaurants, you might only have one or two side dishes. At fancier meals there may be dozens crowding the table, presenting a complex arrangement challenge to both servers and diners. The best known of the side dishes are the kimchis (gimchi 김치, though I'll continue to spell it as "kimchi"), of which in turn there are hundreds of varieties. There is generally always a kimchi present, so if there's only one side dish, it'll be a kimchi.
In the picture above, there are three side dishes, two of which are kimchis. We've put the two kimchis on one plate, which isn't really proper. One is a cabbage-leaf kimchi (the best known and most prototypical type), and the other is a radish kimchi. The third side dish, which is in a square plastic container at the back of the frame, is fried anchovies.
Korean food is famous for being spicy hot (maepda 맵다). It's certainly not true that all Korean food is spicy -- some of it borders on the bland -- but it is true that there is something spicy present at almost every meal, even if it is just a kimchi. And some of the spicier Korean dishes can rival South Indian or Sichuan food in their ability to induce pain.
As Erma has pointed out, Korea is both a rice culture and a soup culture. You really should have both at every meal. More on this in a bit.
Let's take a look at part of a menu for one of the cheap restaurants near campus that caters to students. This is the kind of restaurant where each person in a party will order and eat their own main dish, and share only the side dishes that are placed on the table. It's not uncommon to see pictures on menus in Korean restaurants, which is a great help to both the novice language learner and the novice Korean food eater. The menu pictured here is posted outside the restaurant door, so you can have your order ready the moment you sit down.
The first nine items are all cooked and served in stone bowls (dolsot 돌솥). (This isn't mandatory for these dishes, but it's a common method of cooking.) The bowls are remarkably good at holding in the heat. The stews usually arrive literally boiling hot, and can remain too hot to eat for more than ten minutes after they are set down at the table. (If the spiciness doesn't make you sweat, the heat will.) Notice how red the items in the third row are; that's a good indication of the spiciness level.
All twelve of these dishes can be categorized in simple binary fashion: they are either rice dishes or soup dishes. If you order a rice dish, you'll get a little bowl of soup on the side. If you order a soup dish, you'll get a little bowl of rice on the side. This is in conformity with Erma & Lance's Law of Conservation of Soup and Rice, which states that at every meal each person must have both soup and rice. (Let me know if you can figure out a way to contort the name of the law into a memorable acronym.)
Let's take the dishes in order, starting from the top left and working across and down.
Top Row
1. Yukkejang 육계장: A very spicy soup with shredded beef.
2. Bulgogi Dolsot Bap 불고기돌솥밥: Bulgogi (grilled beef strips) on rice.
3. Jeyuk Dolsot Bap 제육돌솥밥: Pork on rice.
Second Row
4. Kimchi Al Bap 김치알빕: Kimchi and roe on rice.
5. Dolsot Bibimbap 돌솥비빔밥: Bibimbap is one of the most famous Korean dishes. Literally "mixed rice", it consists of ground beef, various julienned vegetables, hot pepper sauce, and sometimes an egg, served over rice. The diner stirs it all up before eating it.
6. Budae Jjigae 부대찌개: A jjigae is a thick and spicy stew. Budae means "military unit". This dish is supposed to be jjigae the way soldiers eat it. (And every single male in Korea serves in the army for several years, so they've all had this.) Basically it's a jjigae full of disgusting processed meats, like SPAM, and kimchi. (The picture shows the ingredients dry. When cooked and served, it will look as red as the dishes in the next row.)
Third Row
7. Kimchi Sundubu 김치순두부: Sundubu actually means sundubu jjigae. Sundubu is soft tofu. So this is a soft-tofu jjigae with kimchi. One of my favorite Korean dishes, it's delicious, with great texture, and very spicy. Notice the raw egg cracked into it. The egg will cook in a minute or two in the boiling liquid.
8. Chamchi Kimchi Sundubu 참치김치순두부: Same as the above, but with chunks of canned tuna as well.
9. Chijeu Kimchi Sundubu 치즈김치순두부: Chijeu is just a Korean pronunciation of the English word "cheese". This is kimchi sundubu with, apparently, a slice of American cheese on it. It's not clear to me or Erma why anyone would want to eat this, and we haven't tried it.
Bottom Row
10. Ojingeo Deopbap 오징어덥밥: Squid fried in spicy sauce over rice.
11. Omeu Raiseu 오므라이스: Omeu is short for "omelette"; raiseu is English "rice". I think both the name and dish come from Japan. As you might guess, it's an omelette on rice.
12. Kimchi Bokkeumbap 참치볶음밥: Kimchi fried rice.
The prices on this menu range from 3300 won to 4000 won, or about $3.50 to $4.25 at current exchange rates. The portions are large and the food is healthy and filling. Plus you get side dishes, and side dishes always come with infinite refills at no cost.
(Interesting aside: From the descriptions of Korean dishes I've read in my class textbook, it appears that Koreans are very sensitive to how many colors a dish has. Almost every description says whether a dish has "just one color" or "a variety of colors" in it. This is not something I would ever think to include in a discussion of European cuisine.)
This is also the kind of food we've been getting in the student dining hall, although there you pick up the side dishes and put them on your tray along with your main dish, so you can't get seconds. All told, Erma and I are probably eating this sort of low-end Korean food for over half of our lunches and dinners.
Though it's not obvious from the menu I've shown you, Koreans eat a lot of seafood. Makes sense: it's a peninsular country. Among the most popular for eating are squid (ojingeo 오징어), small octopus (nakji 낙지), and large octopus (muneo 문어). Americans are often squeamish about these creatures, or at least about seeing them whole instead of cut up into bits. But Korean have no such compunctions. Here's a signboard outside one of the restaurants that's on our walking route to the subway through Shinchon:
The name of the restaurant, written on the top of the sign, is Nakji Chingu 낙지 친구. It means "Octopus Friend". But if you look carefully at the pictures, you'll see that this restaurant is no friend to the octopus.
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