Whether you’re international or Korean, there’s a good chance that nowadays you can walk out of your house and find a place to sit down with friends and eat Korean BBQ.
Korean BBQ has become a huge popular trend recently, but where did it come from? How did it evolve? Today in this post we’re going to take a trip to ancient Korea from where this delicious social eating tradition first started all the way to its modern day form.
To start off, let’s go back… I mean way back.
We’re now in the Goguryeo era (37 B.C.) in ancient Korea. (Technically, Korea at this point was a Korean kingdom located in the northern and southern parts of the Korean peninsula)
Now, what do you want to eat as a person living in this kingdom? Well there’s a lot of options, but we’re going to focus on a specific cooking technique; maekjeok, a kabob-like-skewered meat preparation technique. From this technique, it slowly evolved into something called seoryamyeok, a broth dish of marinated beef soaked in cold water.
From there, we start getting into some more familiar territory with a luxury dish of thinly-sliced, marinated, and charbroiled beef enjoyed by the Korean royalty of the time, neobiani.
However, after the spread of Buddhism across the Korean peninsula, eating meat was prohibited and meat dishes almost completely vanished from the cuisine including maekjeok. Only small fringe tribes still ate meat at this point, but suddenly the Mongols invaded! When they waged their wars and campaigned around the 12th century, meat, as well as maekjeok made a comeback as food supplies started running out and meat needed to be kept edible for longer.
After the wars, and well into the future in 1920 meat, especially beef, became commercialized and widespread across Korea.
Now that we’ve learned some of the history behind bulgogi (marinated meat dishes) and how it came to be, we can look into the adaptations of it and the advent of Korean BBQ and the KBBQ restaurants that are now plentiful around the world.
Today, Korean BBQ is a popular method of grilling meat, such as beef, pork, and chicken. The dishes are often prepared on gas grills or charcoal grills that are physically built into the dining tables themselves, or at home on a portable grill. More rarely, some restaurants have the chef in full view preparing the grilled meats themselves in full view of the customers. The most popular by far form of KBBQ is bulgogi, which is the thinly sliced marinated beef from before, but another very popular form is gaibi, which is made from marinated beef short ribs.
Here’s a list of popular marinated and non-marinated dishes you’ll find along with their meat in English and Korean:
| Meat | Marinated | Non-marinated |
|---|---|---|
| Beef | Bulgogi (불고기) (also known as ‘fire meat’) Galbi (갈비)Jumulleok (주물럭), short steaks marinated with sesame oil | Chadolbagi (차돌박이), thinly sliced brisket point Deungsim (등심), sirloin Kkot deungsim (꽃등심), rib eye steak roll Ansim (안심), beef tenderloin Salchisal (살치살), chuck flap tail Galbisal (갈비살), rib meat Chae kkeut (채끝), strip loinBuchaesal (부채살), top blade Anchangsal (안창살), outside skirt steak Chimasal yangji (치마살양지), flank steak |
| Pork | Dwaeji bulgogi (돼지불고기), spicy pork bulgogi | Samgyeopsal (삼겹살), pork belly |
| Chicken | Dak galbi (닭갈비), spicy marinated chicken | Dak gui (닭구이), grilled chicken |
For the last part of this post, we’re going to go into the three subcategories in my opinion of KBBQ.
– Marinated meat
– Non-marinated meat
– Side dishes (strangely, my favourite part of KBBQ)
Marinated
Bulgogi is hands down the most popular kind of Korean barbecue for a good reason, it’s absolutely delicious. Before cooking the meat is marinated with a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic and pepper, and then traditionally cooked using a gridiron or a perforated dome griddle that sits on a brazier.
Gaibi is made with beef short ribs with the same kind of ingredients as bulgogi, but interestingly it is believed that it tastes best when grilled with charcoal or soot.
Jumulleok is short steak marinated with sesame oil, salt and pepper, it’s almost a sort of unmarinated gogigui and can be distinguished very easily from the other things on this list because of its steak-like and juicy texture, it’s also pretty common to find it being made with duck rather than book.
Spicy pork daeji bulgogi is also quite popular, it is different from regular beef bulgogi in that the marinade is based on gochujang (Korean chili powder)!
Non-marinated
Chadolbegi is a dish made from thinly sliced beef brisket, it’s so thin it cooks essentially instantly as soon as it’s dropped on to the heat.
Samgyeopsai is made of thick strips of unsalted porky belly, it has delicious fatty areas and is exquisitely tender. It tends to be eaten more often than chadolbegi because of it’s cheaper price point and is traditionally eaten with soju (a traditional Korean alcohol).
Loins and Boneless Ribs are also two popular choices of non-marinated dishes.
Sidedishes
I cannot stress this enough, by far my favourite reason to get KBBQ is the side dishes or banchan. Banchan are multiple small bowls of Korean foods set in the middle of the table to be shared.
I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of at least one of these side dishes so lets dive right in and see how many you can recognize.
Kimchi
Kimchi is a catch-all for fermented vegetables but the most recognizable is Napa cabbage, seasoned with chili peppers and salt. Kimchi is an essential standard of any Korean meal, so common, some Korean people might even say a meal is not a meal without kimchi. Some other vegetables you can use to make kimchi are scallions, gat, and raddish.
Namul
Next on the list of side dishes is namul, which is essentially seasoned steamed, marinated, or stir-fried vegetables, usually with sesame oil, salt, vinegar, garlic, green onion, chili peppers, and soy sauce.
Bokkeum
Bokkeum is essentially one of many dishes that are stir-fried with sauce, my favourite kind of bokkeum is jeyook bokkeum which is stir-fried prok with gochujang sauce and onions.
Jorim
Jorum is a dish simmered in a seasoned broth, usually made with tofu in diluted soy sauce, a little bit of sesame oil, garlic, and more green onions.
Jjim
Jjim is a steamed dish using mixed and seasoned eggs made in a hot pot.
Jeon
Jeon can mean a lot of different pan-fried pancake-like dishes, you can have them thin with scallion, with old kimchi, or potato pancakes (think Korean style latkes).
Honorable Mentions
A few honorable mentions for Korean side dishes are danmuji, a kind of pickled radish dyed using gardenia fruit, gyeran-mari, a rolled omelet served in slices, and japchae which could be considered a standalone dish in its own right, japchae are glass noodles accompanied with a variety of vegetables and beef in a sweet garlic sauce.
Now that we’ve got the history and what KBBQ is down, let’s talk a little bit about some of the neat etiquette you’ll want to use when eating KBBQ so you don’t end up embarrassing yourself and being laughed at as the foreigner (don’t worry, it happens to everyone and it’s all in good fun).
Etiquette is actually just a fancy word for table manners in this context, so don’t stress too much about it but do try your best, your Korean friends/coworkers will be impressed at your attempt to respect part of their culture.
Firstly, create a chopstick rest to keep the table clear of stains and grease as well as having a handy place to store them when you’re taking a break from absolutely gorging yourself on delicious food.
Always order extra banchan, for one, side dishes are sort of served on a “free refill” basis so go nuts, and it’s delicious, and I’m craving it now, but make sure you don’t hoard banchan on your plate; remember, these are side dishes.
Try not to make a lot of noise with the spoon or chopstick hitting things.
Don’t poke around the rice of side dishes with your spoon.
Don’t hold the rice or soup bowl in your hand during the meal.
Don’t reach across the table, instead, ask someone who is closer to hand the thing you want to you.
And I’ve heard mixed things on this next rule from my Korean friends, but it’s still nice, generally if the person you’re eating with is older, or you’re the youngest in the group, it’s your responsibility to full their cups with soju and grill the meat (more on this in another post)
Order rice, rice is a great way to balance flavours, so naturally, it’s a great thing to have a little bite of rice to really extra stuff those chubby squirrel cheeks you’re bound to have when eating.
If you’re a drinker, order soju! It’s delicious and very easy to drink, just remember to follow proper alcohol drinking rules and never drink if you’re underage.
Feel free to try grilling kimchi and eating it with a piece of meat for an extra pop of flavor.
Don’t flip the meat more than once or you’ll risk losing away the fatty flavour and bouncy texture, if you want to keep your meat warm feel free to place it to the side of the grill.
This is raw meat, so definitely make sure you cook the meat thoroughly, you’re about to dip this meat in a plethora of sauces so don’t worry to much about rareness, and also, raw chicken is gross so don’t do that please.
The grill is going to get messy, if you’re at home make sure you change the grill between dishes or feel free to ask a server if they haven’t already.
Sesame oil. Lots of it. On everything. That is all.
Finally, the last rule, if you have room for dessert, you haven’t eaten enough.
I hope you enjoyed learning about KBBQ and are hopefully about to head out the door to get some or organizing a meet up with your friends, if any of this information is incorrect feel free to shoot me an email and we can clear it up.
Until next time, David.
davideatseverything 