K-BAP

The word ‘Bap’, part of this blog’s name, refers to meal in Korea. Usually, people say “Come and have bap” when they invite someone to his or her meal. This blog was made for you to have a delicious ‘Bap’, through reading future posts.

Some of readers might think “Why do I need to read this post despite there are so many Asian restaurants like Japanese and Chinese near the city, aren’t those same?”. In fact, that is half correct and half wrong idea. Usual Asian restaurants are the ones selling traditional dishes of East Asian countries, which include Korea, China, and Japan. Because those countries are close with each other, they have many things in common in the food culture, such as living on rice, handling chopsticks to eat. However, there are so many differences about specific dishes and ingredients among them because of the geographical features. There is ‘East Sea’ between Korea and Japan, and ‘Yellow Sea’ between Korea and China, so they could not fully share their foods. Therefore, I strongly argue that you would experience those different features of Korean foods from the other Asian foods through this blog.

Korean meal can be largely divided into three parts such as, Bap, Gook, Banchan. At first, Bap has various meanings in Korea. In addition to the meaning of meal as stated above, Bap means steamed rice, the staple food of Korea. Thus, Bap is so important to Korean people. It is usually steamed with only white rice, but you can mix rice with any other grains like beans or barley. Specific recipe to make Bap would be posted soon. Next, Gook is probably the second important food to Koreans. It can be easily explained as kind of soup. Normally, Gook is watery soup that boiled with many ingredients raised from Korean territory. Almost all kinds of meats, vegetables, and fishes are the main ingredients to make Gook, even sometimes pupa can be cooked for Gook. Finally, Banchan refers to side dish. As same with Gook, almost all kinds of ingredients are cooked for Banchan. Typical example menus of Banchan are Kimchi, steamed egg, dried laver(sea weed), and so on. There are so many kinds of Banchan in Korea. Even I haven’t eat more than quarter of them. Therefore, there would be many future posts about Banchan for this blog.

It is not easy to cook Korean food in United States. However, one thing you should keep in mind is that K-food has so many merits. Try it in your own kitchen, and Korean restaurants (if you can find them). Thank you.

          - S.Choi -