My Korean Summer 2013: Day 24 - Sogang KIP Cooking Class!

Korean food is delicious and if you ever get the opportunity, please try it. My culture class traveled to a training kitchen to make some delicious and fairly well known Korean dishes. I'll write the Hangul and romanized versions for you, we made...the English descriptions are very generalized just to give you an idea of ingredients:

• Bulgogi (불고기) - thinly sliced marinated beef

• Japchae (잡채) - noodles with mixed vegetables

• Kimbab (김밥) - rice, vegetables, fish and/or meat products rolled up in seaweed

First we grabbed some rather fashionable aprons (not) and then headed to the front of the kitchen to see the demo. The chef demonstrated the bulgogi and japchae first. She spoke mostly in Korean and I might have understood half of what she said but it was pretty easy to simple watch what she did. She was cooking at a blazing heat, there were flames engulfing the pan at times...

I won't bore you with the details but I will mention one of my classmates tasted a lot of stations food and said we had the best bulgogi. The chef also complemented my cutting of the carrot in the dishes :) Here are some more pictures:

Many people say kimbap is like Korean sushi...even though kimbap looks very much liked sushi rolls, the taste is completely different. They are seasoned differently and the ingredients don't always overlap. Many times in Korea you can come across some interesting things included in kimbap (spam, fish cake, cheese, potato, lettuce, mayonnaise, etc). Even on campus we have a kimbap called something like "Ugly but Tasty Kimbap". 

Bulgogi and japchae are safe bets for people trying Korean food for the first time. I mean, who doesn't like beef and a pasta-like dish :) The chef assistants even gave us some kimchi to eat as a side with our main dishes we made!

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