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Popular Korean street food recipes
Gyeran-ppang, the egg bread sold at Korean street stalls, adapts neatly to a muffin tin: a lightly sweet batter fills each cup halfway, and a whole egg cracked on top bakes into it as the batter rises around it. Chopped ham and scallions add a salty, savory layer to the sweet bread.
The rice gets sesame oil and salt, no vinegar. Pick an avocado that gives slightly when pressed yet holds its shape when sliced: underripe fruit is coarse to chew, and overripe fruit gets crushed by the bamboo mat. Cut avocado loses color and texture quickly, and it is prepared right before rolling.
Pork large intestine is stuffed with glutinous rice, pork blood, blanched mung bean sprouts and napa cabbage, and doenjang, then steamed into a thick sundae that cuts into broad, heavy slices. The casing is filled only about 80 percent to leave room for the rice to swell, and the cooked sundae cools completely before slicing, or the filling squeezes out.
A single ring of rice-syrup candy, dusted with glutinous rice flour and stretched and folded over and over, turns into a skein of hair-fine white threads. Syrup temperature decides whether the ring can be pulled at all: taken too far it sets before stretching, and too low it will not hold its shape.
Garaetteok, the long cylinder-shaped Korean rice cake, turns golden and firm outside and stays stretchy inside when rolled around in butter in a pan. A thin coat of soy sauce and rice syrup goes on next, then sesame salt and crumbled seaweed.
Fish cakes of assorted shapes simmer with shiitake in a kelp and radish broth and come to the table in the pot, seasoned lightly with soup soy sauce so their own flavor stays in front.
Ground mung bean batter, mixed with kimchi, bean sprouts and pork, is fried in small rounds the way market stalls do it, with no holding back on the oil. Well-fermented kimchi gives it a sour edge, and it is dipped in soy sauce cut with vinegar.
With only gochujang, vinegar and sugar in the dressing, this bunsik-shop noodle dish lives on the texture of the noodles. A thorough cold rinse is what makes sweet potato glass noodles springy, because any warmth left after draining keeps them softening until they stick into a clump. The dressing keeps in the fridge, but the noodles should meet it only just before eating, or they soak it up and turn soft.
There are only three fillings: dried gourd strips simmered in soy sauce and corn syrup, egg ribbons, and yellow pickled radish. The gourd turns sweet, salty and chewy, but any braising liquid left on it soaks the rice and laver once rolled. The heat goes up at the end until only a glaze, no liquid, is left in the pan.
Bacon, bread and eggs all cook one after another in the same pan, and the bread, toasted in butter, comes out crisp enough to seem almost fried. A tablespoon of ketchup is spread thinly to the edges and the sugar scattered evenly to keep the sweetness from piling up in one bite. Shredded cabbage tucked in adds crunch and bulk.
Melted sugar caught at pale amber foams up to two or three times its volume within seconds of adding baking soda, then cools into a thin disc that snaps cleanly when tapped. It has to come off the heat right at that color; one shade darker and it turns bitter. The shape cutter only presses an outline, and the disc is left alone until it has cooled hard.
Skewered fish cakes and thick slices of radish simmer in anchovy and kelp broth, a soup Koreans set out alongside drinks. The kelp comes out the moment the water starts to boil, which keeps the broth from turning slick.
The egg itself replaces the dumpling wrapper, setting around a filling of cabbage, scallion and glass noodles in palm-sized rounds. It follows the flat egg mandu sold as a market snack, and no flour goes into it at all. The noodles are cut short to make flipping easier.
Jjolmyeon noodles have a rubbery, teeth-resisting chew, and topping them with tender soy-and-sugar marinated beef sets up a sharp contrast in texture. The gochujang and vinegar sauce adds spicy, sour notes that cut the bulgogi's sweetness. Shredded cabbage and carrot bring crunch, while a halved boiled egg tempers the chili.
Tuna gimbap is on nearly every Korean gimbap shop menu. Well-drained tuna mixed with mayonnaise runs down the center, surrounded by carrot, spinach, thin egg strips and danmuji, yellow pickled radish.
Vienna sausages coated in pancake-mix batter and pressed breadcrumbs fry up into hot dogs small enough for one bite. A 30-second blanch strips surface fat from the sausages so the batter grips instead of sliding.
Strawberries and grapes on skewers get one quick turn in sugar syrup cooked to 150°C, which leaves a thin shell that shatters like glass over cold, juicy fruit. Syrup that falls short of that temperature stays tacky even after cooling. Humid air softens the set shell quickly, so these are eaten right where they are made.
Half a spoonful of doenjang in the chili paste keeps the heat from turning sharp. The sundae sits on cabbage and onion and simmers at the table; the broth grows stronger as it reduces, and the flame comes down as you eat, with the perilla leaves added last.
Shredded potato and kimchi are pressed into a pan or cup-shaped mold to form a thick base and rim, and the hollow in the middle is filled with mozzarella and green onion and covered until the cheese melts. The potato is rinsed only once in cold water to keep its starch, which is what holds the cup shape. Being bite-sized, they also work as party finger food.
Chewy and clear, sweet-potato glass noodles grab the gochujang-soy sauce tightly and bring a vivid sweet-spicy hit with every lift of the chopsticks. The dish comes from street food sold in Busan's markets, and it is quick: boil the noodles, then toss them with briefly stir-fried vegetables, fish cake, and the sauce. Fish cake adds a soft savory note against the springy noodles, while cabbage and carrot, cooked only until just bent, keep some crunch.
Like the cup rice sold at Korean snack shops, it is warm rice topped with tuna mayo and a heap of crushed seaweed. The tuna is first cooked with onion, scallion, soy sauce and sugar, and the mayonnaise goes in only after the heat is off, which keeps it from separating.
Baked in a fish-shaped mold, bungeoppang have a thin golden shell, a crisp tail made of batter alone, and red bean paste in the belly. The batter is kept a little thinner than pancake batter, thin enough to run into every corner of the tail and belly pattern. Keeping the bean paste in the center of the belly, away from the edges, stops it from leaking when the mold closes.
These coaster-sized kimchi pancakes stand two or three to a cup and are eaten out of hand, the way they might be at a pojangmacha, one of Korea's covered street stalls. The batter is kept thicker than for a regular kimchi pancake, which stops the rounds from slumping inside the cup, and some kimchi brine goes into it as well. Soy sauce or vinegared gochujang comes alongside.
Hot, just-seared brisket lands on cold, chewy jjolmyeon, and every bite mixes warm beef fat with a tangy gochujang dressing. The brisket goes into a dry pan and only browns at the edges, which keeps the marbling in the slices instead of rendering it away. Jjolmyeon are dense, elastic wheat noodles that hold a sticky sauce well, but any water left on them or on the soaked cabbage and cucumber thins that coating fast.