My favorite Korean foods

I'm not sure where my love for South Korea started but let's just say the food started it all. What I love most about Koreans is that they use everything, and I mean everything in their cooking. Some of which being Nigerian I'm not surprised to see, like chicken feet for example. But some foods like, sundae, (blood sausage), is something I wonder if I should try or not. I am open to trying it though, but still probably not, or maybe. And then there are some vegetables that they use that I didn’t even think were edible like dandelion or pumpkin leaves. Anyway, here are my four Korean favorites for now, it will definitely change.

Bibimbap

The first on the list is bibimbap, because it was the first Korean dish I tried. I had this at a Korean store/restaurant. This is just rice cooked in a stone pot/plate with vegetables, eggs, and kimchi (fermented cabbage). I think anything can go into this dish. What do I love about it? The fact that it is usually served in a stone plate keeps the food cooking which means it is always warm. Also, this dish isn’t spicy so if you don’t like spicy foods this is quite good.

Tteokbokki

My second favorite is tteokbokki. This is a street food in korean and is made of cylindrical-shaped rice cakes, and is very spicy depending on the one you get. I love this dish because it is chewy, and well spicy you can also eat it with anything like kimchi, or ramen like in the picture above. They come in different varieties too from curry to seafood tteokbokki. I have tried jjajang tteokbokki which is sweet, and also the original which is a little spicy, both of these I bought online since they’re a little hard to come by.

Doenjang jjigae

My third favorite is doenjang jjigae or korean soybean paste stew, (couldn't find a picture). This one I was able to make myself because it was a relatively easy recipe. Some ingredients were hard to come by so I had to use substitutes or eliminate some things, but I think I made it work. It obviously didn't taste the same though. I wasn't a fan of tofu mostly because of the texture, it was way too soft for me.

Ramen

My last favorite is ramen, if you love ramen you know they come in different varieties with different ingredients. My favorite right now is chapagetti, this was surprisingly bland but somehow still very good. Another of my favorite which I made was adding tteokbokki powder sauce to chicken ramen, it was unexpectedly good, but I can’t make it that often because I’m not sure where I can find just tteokbokki powder sauce without the tteokbokki. I tried an octopus flavored one too, it had a sweet, and delayed spiciness to it, but I couldn’t recreate it a second time due to not knowing the amount of water I had put in at the first try.

Another thing I love about the Korean cuisine is their side dishes, like kimchi for example, or pickled radish, which is one of my favorite but didn't include it here because it's a side dish. But their foods usually include a lot of side dishes which I think makes it a wholesome meal. They also make an unhealthy food a little healthy, take ramen for example, it’s a processed food but if you add some vegetables on the side it makes for an almost healthy meal, adding some kind of meat, or tofu if you’re vegetarian also makes it healthy.