
Updated:Feb 01, 2025

If you are a die-hard fan of K-pop and K-dramas, why don’t you get a sneak peek into Korean cuisine through an Indian lens? Growing up eating dal chawal, here’s how a North Indian scholar is navigating her way through Korean cuisine living in Gwangju.
Image Credit: Freepik
First Impression Of Korean Food
Initially, I had only seen Korean food and K-dramas. After watching multiple series, I tried Korean food in my hometown – Patiala, Punjab. And that tastes very “Indian,” as most places back home use Indian spices to cater to the audience. So, my first impression of the cuisine was that I’d be able to have it. And even when I used to watch K-dramas, the soups, Sundubu-jjigae, and Tteokbokki, all looked very reddish in colour. Looking at the images, I related them to just how we cook our dishes like butter chicken, paneer tikka, and paneer curries are made.
Also, through K-dramas, another thing that I inferred was that these guys love spicy food and eat a lot of meat. Seriously, they eat every single body part of a cow and a pig, and they eat a lot of seafood since vegetables are not grown here.
Challenges While Adapting To Korean Cuisine
The biggest challenge with Korean food after I moved here was that everything contained meat. I am a vegetarian, and it was really, really difficult to find something that didn’t have meat or seafood. In Korea, people think that if you’re a vegetarian, you avoid meat, but seafood shouldn’t be a problem. So, I started telling them that I’m a vegan, and then I got the options I could have. Plus, it wasn’t just about the restaurants. Most of their products, like chips, toffees, chewing gum, jam, and even curd, have meat.
Changes in the cooking oil were also something new to me. Back in India, we use refined oil, and in Korea, everything is cooked in sesame oil. Since sesame oil has a different and peculiar taste, it gets time to grow on your tongue.
Bibimbap is also one of my favourites. It is a rice-based dish served with a side of vegetables and Gochujang, which is essentially the Korean red chilli paste. The rice cake dish, Tteokbokki, has also become a comfort food. It’s also easy to make.
As for a friendly tip, if you’re coming to Korea, please learn how to use chopsticks. Initially, I did not know how to use chopsticks, and whenever I went to a restaurant, they never had spoons or forks. Another thing I noticed here is that no matter what you order in Korea, you always get side dishes. Even if you order one soup, they will give you about ten side dishes with kimchi. For example, kimchi has a lot of variations like there is radish, kimchi, cabbage, kimchi, cucumber, kimchi, and things like that, so they give you all sorts of kimchi, eggrolls, etc. So, you don’t need to order anything else with soup or rice.
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