Traditional Korean Kitchen

The traditional Korean kitchen features wood fires, but modern times have brought gas and electric stoves. Most of the cooking is quite simple. A good heavy frying pan, a wok and some saucepans or flameproof casseroles will see you through many of the Korean dishes. The only other unusual vessel you need is the traditional pot used in 'steamboat' or "firekettle" meals if you want to serve Sin Sul Lo in true Korean fashion. This pot has a central chimney surrounded by a moat, which holds the food. It cooks and keeps hot at the tables because the chimney is filled with glowing coals. Get the coals ready an hour or more beforehand in an outdoor barbecue, an hibachi or a metal bucket so they will be well alighted and glowing when needed.

The food can be arranged in the pot well ahead of serving time and the whole pot placed in the refrigerator. Just before starting the meal, the moat is filled with boiling stock, the cover put on the pot to ensure particles of coal don't fall into the food, and the coals or briquettes (which should be alight and glowing) are transferred to the chimney with tongs. To protect the table, put the pot on a heavy metal tray and put the tray on a thick wooden board. After the broth has simmered for a while, and the contents of the pot are heated through, guests pick out food with chopsticks and eat it with rice and a dipping sauce. At the end of the meal, the stock is served as soup.

These pots are usually sold at Chinese stores. While some models in polished and ornate brass are quite expensive, the modest anodized aluminum versions are cheap and work just as well. In Korea, the pots are either individual-size silver ones, or larger stainless steel versions. Of course you can always substitute an electric frying pan or deep fryer or wok, three quarters filled with stock; or use any fairly deep pan on an efficient table burner.

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Serving and Eating a Korean Meal

Silver will discolor whenever it comes into contact with any poison, as such they are considered a safer way to eat in Korea. As such, using a silver chopsticks and spoons have been used extensively in Korean meal .A proper meal setting will also have silver bowls for rice and soup. Pricey, but the silver cutlery is often a natural part of a bride's dowry. Daily settings are of brass or china. These days stainless steel is much more preferred than brass since it doesn't need the polishing which brass does.

Food is served and consumed from bowls, not plates. Things are all placed on the table immediately - rice, soup, fish, chicken, beef, hot sauces, sweet and sour sauces, vegetables cooked in numerous methods and kimchi of assorted kinds. There are many types of kimchi, some prepared by having dried shrimps or salted fish, and complex versions which includes uncommon fruits and veggies. A few are quite strong while some can be mild.

The meal doesn't conclude with sweets. At times fresh fruits are offered, however it's not the daily pattern of eating. Korean fruits consist of apples, Korean pears (not the same as the varieties we all know), oranges, grapes, cherries, plums and persimmons.

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Recipes of Korea

(Korean Recipes)

Rice is commonly served at each meal in Korea. Frequently it is served as porridge, particularly for elderly people and kids in the morning as breakfast. In the rest of the other meals, steamed white rice, prepared with the absorption method, will be consumed alongside the soups, meats, seafood, veggies and, needless to say, the authentic kimchi. Rice is actually of such great significance that each meals are generally referred to as comprising rice and panch'an, which is an expression that includes other things that are served together with rice.

Occasionally the rice will be mixed with some other grains like barley as well as beans. Among the many beans chosen are dried lima beans, azuki beans or also known as red beans and soy beans, or soybean products like bean paste, bean curd and soy sauce.

The country of Korea comes with an abundance of fish together with other seafoods, and quite often the fish is actually blended in astonishing methods with meat or poultry. Similar to the Japanese, Koreans frequently use seaweed, particularly the dried layer seaweed generally known as nori by the Japanese as well as kim by the Koreans. Seaweed is eaten as a relish.

In Korea, beef is definitely a favorite meat compared to the other meats. Chicken and pork will also be cooked, but mutton is never eaten. Koreans usually don't cooktheir beef in one big piece.They will usually be sliced thinly into small bite sizes; and occasionally the beef slices are even flattened out further for added thinness. The beef is then kneaded properly using a marinade and kept for several hours in order that it is tenderized and flavored in the process. Although Korean broil the beef or charcoal grill which is known as bulgogi or bulgalbi, daily food preparation consists of simple steaming, boiling, stir frying as well as shallow or deep frying; however baking isn't really among their food preparation methods, because only a handful of Koreans possess ovens in their home. As such it is not popular.

The actual 7 fundamental tastes of Korean food are generally garlic cloves, pepper, ginger, scallions, traditional soy sauce, toasted sesame seeds and the oil. The sesame seeds are usually smashed prior to being included in marinades or combined with other cooked dishes, hence releasing its complete flavor.

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