"koreanfood" news and stories

Move over Jinro. Doosan, your main competitor in the soju game, just teamed up with one of the big boys, Anheuser-Busch.

Who knows, if all goes well A-B might just make soju a household word. As you might have guessed, the Korean spirit brewed from sweet potatoes and rice, among other things, has long been a household word for me. The crisp spirit is a lower-octane, tastier version of vodka that's the libation of choice for Korean food, barbecue or otherwise.

A-B, will be taking over the distribution of Ku Soju, which is distilled by Doosan. I've tried more than a handful of sojus in my day, but I've never heard of Ku. The article I read makes much of comparing it to such premium vodkas as Belvedere and Chopin. Forget that noise, I want to know how this stuff stands up to a blazing bowl of soon doo-boo jji-gae.

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It's another late night here in the Slashfood virtual offices, and as we surf the web as we usually do in our last moments before collapsing into bed, we have come across what we think might be The Food Trend of the Year. At the beginning of this year, all the food fashion forecasters put in their guesses as to what they believe will be the "It" food for the upcoming year, whether it's exotic spices from South Asia being used more commonly in the home kitchen or specific products that will gain some traction. Maybe it will be: Korexican.

That's the fusion of Korean and Mexican, as we see in kalbi tacos from LA food blogger Eat, Drink n B Merry. Some say that "fusion" cuisine was over all the way back when leggings were in style the first time, but leggings have come back, and apparently, so has fusion. At least, it did at a semi-buzzed barbecue in southern California.

Chopped kimchee with kalbi is always delicious, but not sure how it tastes with guacamole!

For this edition of Midnight Snack I decided to crack open probably some of the strangest stuff I've come across in a long time: Fried Chicken Snack and Hot Chicken Snack. Both of these junk food oddities come to the States from Korea's Nong Shim Co.

First a few words about the packaging. While I've taken this photo vertically with shaky late-night hands to better display the "chicken," the boxes open horizontally not unlike a package of takeout fried chicken. That folks is where the resemblance ends, almost. At least the pieces look like fried chicken drumsticks. Each is about an inch long and has a rough surface resembling breading.

But how do they taste? Sooooo very glad you asked. Even though it bears the words "Fried Chicken Taste" on the package this variety tastes only like fried bird because of its crunch and slightly greasy texture. I prefer the hot variety, which again tastes nothing at all like fried chicken, but rather like a wheat-based version of Andy Capp's Hot Fries. But it's all good, I was down a quart of palm oil anyway.

For those of you who think I'm all about junk food, you're right. But don't worry, future editions of Midnight Snack may feature me eating cold leftovers while standing in front of the fridge.

If you live on either coast, or even in the Midwest in a major metropolitan area, you'll have no problem finding an Asian grocery store. Korean-specific markets are a little harder to find, and if you're somewhere where there isn't a huge population of Korean people, well, you might find yourself at a loss when a craving for kimchee strikes. You can make it yourself, or you can click over to koaMart, an online Korean food grocer.

Sure, they do the dry, non-perishable goods like ramen and rice, but they can send perishable goods like tofu and kimchee as well. I've never shopped at the store since I live in Los Angeles, but if I were in say, the mountains of Colorado (or really, really lazy) I might give them a try. Shipping isn't cheap, but hey, when you need your pickled, fermented cabbage, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The idea for a bulgogi burger came to me last summer when I was thinking about entering a burger grill-off/competition. Little did I know that the "Bulgogi Burger" is already a standard menu item on fast food burger joints in Korea. I was slightly disheartened, since my idea wasn't original, and scrapped it for the competition.

But I never forgot about making it myself. I've never actually tried a bulgogi burger in Korea (it's been about 15 years since I've been there), and decided that I didn't want to know how it is made in tha' Motherland. I wanted to come up with my own. Besides, someone also told me that many "Bulgogi Burgers" are not burgers at all - they are real pieces of bulgogi slapped between the buns. Who knows? I didn't care.