Sunday Story: Korean Banchan

I feel as though I have mentioned Korean banchan a million times, but I never actually told you what it is except that it's a Korean "side dish".  This is the best approximation of the English equivalent, but it's not a direct translation.  Is anything ever?

The concept of a Korean place setting is this.  In front of each person there is a large bowl of white rice.  And I mean large, like 2.5 servings or more.  Whether the chef/host thinks you're gonna finish it or not is irrelevant.  It would be highly rude and unfavorable to give your guest anything less than a heaping bowl of rice.

(This is not really the case anymore, but back in the olden days, it was also considered polite for the guest to leave a few grains of rice left over in the bowl at the end to signify that they had had more than enough to eat, and they are so full they can't possibly eat the rest of the rice in the bowl)


Anyways, so you got it?  Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you always have a bowl of rice.

You will also get a spoon and a pair of chopsticks.  Unlike Chinese customs, Koreans use huge spoons for eating rice with.  And a fun fact that my parents point out to my not-so-Korean fiance when he eats with us: Korean chopsticks are rectangular while Chinese chopsticks are cylindrical.  Anyways, if you go to a Korean restaurant, you are most definitely expected to use your spoon to eat the rice.  Don't sit there and struggle trying to eat your rice with the super-thin metal chopsticks.  We will point and laugh.  Just kidding.

Now comes the fun part.  No one is expected to eat rice alone.  Not even the family dog eats just rice alone.  You might get a bowl of hot soup to go along with it, like a Jigae.  But the real fun is all the banchan.

In a normal meal at home with just your family on an ordinary day, you might get like 5-6 different types of banchan.  These are small dishes for everybody to share.  They can be meat banchans, or seafood banchans, or vegetable banchans.  The most common of which is some type of kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage) and kim (dried seaweed, like the kind you make kimbop out of). 

Let me show you some examples.  The meal below is just a cafeteria meal at the hospital I visited when I was in Korea.

So you have the rice on the left, then clockwise: beet pancakes, spicy dressing for the salad, some sort of fish banchan, a type of kimchi, tuna salad, and a big bowl of soup.  This is just a very typical and nondescript meal you'd get at any cafeteria.  No big deal.

Okay, then this is something a whole lot more special.  My great aunt took us to this awesome restaurant in downtown Seoul where you get all these banchans with the meat dish you order.  (The main meat dish, like sam gyup sal, bulgogi, etc. is not considered a banchan.  That's because there's nothing small about it.)

As you can see, between the four of us that were dining, there are over 14 banchans alone, not counting the meat, the vegetable medley you see over to the right, and all the rice you can eat (that's the thing in the metal container behind my water glass).

Fun, huh?

And finally, the meal below is my birthday meal from my 23rd? 24th? birthday dinner with my family at home.  My mom had made all kinds of banchans and put them in pretty dishes for her favorite daughter.

So starting with the dish closest to us, going clockwise: japchae (clear noodle stir fried with meat, spinach, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and whatever else), mook (er...oh man, can someone help me out with this one?  it's like blocks of gelatin-like stuff made with beans?!?! translation FAIL), kimchi, spicy crab, super spicy fish salad with cucumber, and the thing in the middle i'm not sure of.  Maybe super spicy squid.

But hm, there's something missing here.  After all, it WAS my birthday dinner.  What do we need, what do we need....

Oh yes.

Charcoal-grilled kalbee (Korean ribs).  YESSSS!!  And now the rice and soup is also on the table.  Excellent.  Let the gluttony begin.

Other etiquette stuff: elbows on the table is perfectly okay, talking while eating and chewing loudly is fine, reaching across the table and grabbing what you want is fine, none of that "please pass the ___" nonsense.  Don't be surprised if the host kinda grabs big choice pieces of meat or delicious banchan and just plops it down on your rice.  That just means they like you and want you to eat the best parts.   What you don't wanna do is pick at your food or shuffle through the banchan to get at the piece you want from underneath. 

I hope you enjoyed my amateur mini-lesson on Korean cuisine.  I always enjoy teaching people about my food because I feel like there is SO much good stuff in Korean food that most American folks don't know much about.  Next time you decide to go out with your friends, lovah, or family, try a Korean restaurant for a change.  I think you'll really like it!

Have a wonderful Sunday, everybody!