Seafood & Meat

Haesanmul & Gogi

Appears in

Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes

Published 2018

About

Years ago, the traditional meal for a normal Korean family like mine would have been banchan, rice, and soup. If you saw a mound of meat or a whole fish on the table, it meant something good had happened to your family, something to celebrate. While meat or seafood might have been added to a stew, it was rarely at the center of the table. And even when it was the center, it was still a healthful meal, with a table full of vegetable-based banchan side dishes.

Now that’s all out the window. With the rise of the South Korean economy, and overall affluence around the country, a lot of the recipes in this chapter are everyday meals and anytime snacks for all Koreans, now found on menus of ordinary, everyday restaurants there and here in the United States. A dish built only around meat or fish is no longer special or rare, and with a few banchan it is still a balanced meal. In fact, if you’re serving a traditional Korean meal for a party, a lot of the recipes in this chapter can be served as special banchan, too.