My introduction to South Korean culture was what I feel is a very common method and that is K-pop. K-pop is the genre of pop music that comes out of South Korea. This music in combination with seeing an episode of the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown about Korea had piqued my interest in their culture.
Being a home cook, I wanted to dive in-to the culinary side of their culture. I ventured to my local Korean barbecue restaurant and experienced what I feel is an over-popularized aspect of South Korean cuisine in the USA. Never less I thoroughly enjoyed the meal. The meat was great being thinly sliced and marinated in a delicious concoction of sauces. But what intrigued me was the side dishes. The sticky rice cakes and kimchi had me hooked. In the next months, I traveled to New York City and visited a restaurant called Turntable LP Karaoke and Bar. At this restaurant, I ordered the Kimchi Fried Rice (Bokkeumbap) and was blown away at the flavors. Regular fried rice seemed boring and bland to me now. I knew I wanted to incorporate Korean cuisine into my diet. So, I ordered a book called Korean Paleo by Jean Choi. This book contains over 80 recipes of Korean dishes but modified to fit the restrictions of the paleo diet. The first one I tried was the Bokkeumbap recipe which uses cauliflower rice instead of white rice. The results I got were amazing. It was so flavorful to be a “healthy” recipe and I discovered so many things I hadn’t known about before like the sauce Gochujang that seems to be a staple in Korean food. It is umami defined, sweet, tangy, and deeply rich. I feel that I had just discovered an entire cuisine of delicious food and I had no idea about it for most of my life.
A Home Cook's Tour 