More Korean Food

Thursday night a few of my friends and I went out for some yummy Korean food. Galbi is a Korean meat dish made from beef short ribs. The ribs are marinated in a sauce made from fruit juice (generally Asian pear juice), rice wine, soy sauce, garlic, sesame seed oil and sugar. Most recipes contain these basic ingredients, although many variations exist, including variations from clear marinades to spicier marinades. This is really good bbq.

Instead of coleslaw and potato salad we have sides like kimchi and a whole bunch of other foods. i haven't learned the names of them yet but most of them pointing and giving a big thumbs up lets the waitress know you want more.
Of course ti would not be complete without ordering some random Korean alcohol in a pretty bottle. I think it tasted like a combo of wine and scotch. Not very good but made me all warm inside.

I've gotten pretty good at using chopsticks. I will say that in my experience Koreans think ti's funny that we try to eat everything with chop sticks. They use spoons for a lot of food like rice. They also use spoons to swirl noodles like one would use with spaghetti.

the way to eat Galbi is to take a piece of lettuce or sesame leaf and put a little bit of sauce ( no idea what is in it but tasty and hot), then add some rice, onions and of course the hot bbq meat that you've cooked right in the center of your table. One of the things that i promised myself before i came to Korean is that I would do my best to try everything. So one thing that Koreans are really good at is not being wasteful. They are awesome recyclers and also believe in not letting any part of the animal go to waste. So i tried a little version of surf and turf. That is a piece of Galbi and a shrimp full on with head, eyes, legs and everything. I even ate the shell. it was a bit crunchy but not bad in taste at all.


After we stuffed ourselves solid we kind of rolled out of there leaving this pile of dishes in our wake. The one bad thing about eating sitting on the floor is that it would be so easy to just slump over and go to sleep. Instead it is a battle of wits between both of your sleeping limbs and your full belly.It can be quite the challenge but oh so worth it. this meal is about $11.00 per person and you get and endless supply of side dishes. We also got a big ol bowl of hot spicy soup to start the meal. yumyumyum.

I've gotta say i'm a big fan of Korean food. The one challenge i find is the constant mixture of temperatures. The meat is so hot and the sides are usually cold so that's an interesting thing to get used to. It's good though i'm a big fan.