My parents consider stuff like this as “shameful” and my father banned SPAM & vienna sausage from our house when we were young! He was appalled when I was dating a local from Hawaii and we were eating SPAM on a regular basis, LOL… My parents are total nationalists and kinda snobs on top of that, but their attitude isn’t that unusual for the middle class generations that remember the war. When I think back at all the good Korean food my mom was cooking from scratch while me and my siblings wanted Chef Boy R Dee and Burger King – I cringe. To this day, I still apologize for us being horrible children.
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Wow… That is SO interesting!!!
Yes, SPAM is a staple here… and so good fried up and wrapped in rice and nori… a “Musubi.”
Your mom’s cooking must have been fantastic!!
That’s so funny that they had considered the hot dogs and spam shameful but you can kind of see why… it “contaminates” the purist food.
Kyle’s favorite place for this army ration stew was in Myeongdong–kind of a touristy area… but also you could get it in the college town where my son was living.
Are you saying your parents also didn’t approve of the samgypsal and kimichijeon? Those are also junk foods?
If they are, I don’t care!!! They are heavenly!!!
Samgyeoosal is real meat and quite expensive and so it doesn’t set off my parent’s nationalist snob radar. It’s more about the American, low quality canned meat (SPAM, vienna sausage) that got incorporated into the Korean diet during the 1950s because the country was so poor. Kimchijeon is wonderful – my mom made all her “Korean pancakes” from scratch, even grinding whole mung beans to make into flour for the pancakes. She liked to put seafood into them (there’s the snob thing again) with the kimchi. She was making kimchi from scratch since there were no Korean markets back then. I can’t believe how much time it took for her to cook. After immigrating and learning to make a tuna casserole (noodles, canned tuna, can of cream of mushroom soup, slices of american cheese on top, sprinkled with corn flakes) she said to me, “American food is so easy, if only your father would eat it!”
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Bahahaha!! - That’s because your Dad knew things that come in boxes and cans aren’t really food…lol.
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It’s kind of funny you mention dishes like that. My mom never cooked anything liked that, and what she did cook was not that good. Sorry mom…but you know it’s the truth. So when I went to my friends’ homes for dinner they would have stuff like what your mom describes as “easy American” food - and I always thought their moms were such good cooks. But I had no idea they were just opening jars of mushroom soups and cans, stirring, toss in the oven - and Voila! Dinner is served.
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Please please share your mom’s kimchieon recipe with us! Or at least a variation! My son tries to make his own but can never get the flour mix right. Yes, we had them with calamari!! Ohhhh, the wonderful wonderful food in Korea!!! Like no other place in the world!
This was our favorite place for kimchigeon in downtown Hoegi. You had to go down some some stairs and under a building to get there. The chef somehow made this kimchijeon crispy! To die for!!!
This must have taken months and months!!! I am so impressed!
Yes, a crispy exterior is the best! The problem with re-heating these is that you can never get that texture back but my mom would make a ton all at once because it was such a project. I’ve tried to get recipes out of her before (can you believe I get my kalbi marinade recipes online?!) but she’s just impossible. “And then put the shrimp paste in, just enough to give deep flavor but not so much that it’s fishy.” “How much do I put in - a teaspoon? More? Less?” “Just put in the right amount until it tastes perfect”.
On camping trips she would direct us to take big smooth rocks out of of the river and bring them into the car. Turns out she would clean them when she got home and then place them on top of the Napa cabbage leaves as they were brining to keep them from floating. I once asked her about how to make something and she yelled at me to go buy it from the Korean market and to not wear myself out by cooking from scratch. She says we have it so easy now, and she’s right but I like organic food which means I need to cook which drives her crazy…
You can see how cool, local and authentic this place is. A local Korean friend took my son and showed him how to eat like a true local!
This is his “kitchen.” I took a picture because I was convinced he was deep frying the kimchijeon! But I don’t see a deep fryer. We didn’t want to bother him while he cooked but we were so curious and wanted to duplicate it ourselves if possible. We’ve never been able to!
You could write your name on the wall if you wanted!
Thank you for sharing your mom’s stories! Sounds like she has a sense of humour!
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I think all the fermented foods they have there are really healthy. My son had lost a ton of weight by the time I went to visit him, a few months after he had arrived for school. He is not going to be happy until he’s living in Korea again. I miss it so much too. What an endearing place! I want to go back!!!
Yeah, the traditional diet is pretty healthy and low in saturated fats although it’s quite salt-heavy. That place looks awesome – my favorite food places in Seoul also always seemed to be subterranean, why is that? You have me really craving Korean food right now and there’s nothing in my cabinets but ramen…
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Apparently… they said YOUR was correct as it was a Welcome that belonged to YOU. 
It still looks wrong to me hahah.
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We host in a quiet area with shops closing at 7 and also part live there as well so we keep the property fully stocked with food and guests can use this as a honour system.
Most guests don’t use this but the ones who do are most appreciative, esp when it is rainy or cold outside.
We allow cooking so I provide cans of tomatoes, tuna, corn, olives, beans etc that people could assemble a meal from. We have dried pasta and the rice in packets that can be microwave cooked in 90s. I also have 1-2 packs of the rice/tuna ready prepared meals that come in tins, and soup in the pantry. We have breakfast food including museli and instant porridge.
In the freezer we keep Frozen steamed veggies, pizza and ice blocks/ice cream.
Guests are welcome to use our cooking oil, spices and condiments (sauces, pickles etc)
I also keep some middle of the range wine, beer and sparkling water.
What guests have used has been…pizza, breakfast foods, some of the foods for cooking… particularly one guest who wanted to bake muffins used some of our flour, baking powder, sugar. We have had people use the drinks.
We have always been reimbursed if obvious quantities used, even someone put in 50c as I think they used a bit of museli.
I admit this works as we also use the place between guests and so can keep an eye on usage and also use up any food not being eaten.
Given this, it wouldn’t phase me if there were unobvious amounts eaten and they couldn’t reimburse as I think this is not the norm…
I think once we had a family with young child stay and they had used the gastrolyte fluid hydration ice blocks we had in the freezer…I reason they must have really needed that!
We charge sufficiently to account for the fact we have this additional amenity.
Hope that helps
Oh we also keep 1-2 nice instant noodle packets for guests just in case, but they haven’t been used at all… incidentally since keeping these packets there, I have discovered the huge variation in instant noodles, mind boggling!