Bibimbap: This Korean lunch-in-a-bowl mixes together a simple salad of rice, mixed vegetables, rice, beef and egg, with sesame oil and a dollop of chili paste for seasoning.
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Samgyetang: Samgyetang is a thick, glutinous soup with a whole chicken stuffed with ginseng. The cooking process tones down the ginseng's signature bitterness and leaves an oddly appealing, aromatic flavor in its stead.
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Samgyeopsal: Served with lettuce, perilla leaves, sliced onions and raw garlic kimchi, the sizzling pork strips are smudged in ssamjang (a mix of soybean paste called 'doenjang' and chili paste called 'gochujang') or salt and pepper in sesame oil.
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Sundae: Another street food staple, sundae is pig intestine with a stuffing of cellophane noodles, vegetables and meat.
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Gimbap: For thisone, sauteed vegetables, ground beef, sweet pickled radish and rice are rolled and tightly wrapped in a sheet of laver seaweed (gim), and then sliced into bite-sized circles.
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Kalguksu: Kalguksu, made with handmade knife noodles, is considered a summer dish, but it's served all year round.
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Kimchi: Dating to the Silla Dynasty (around 2,000 years ago), kimchi is the beloved spicy sidekick at every Korean table. It's made by salting and preserving fermented cabbage in a bed of red chili pepper, garlic, ginger and scallion.
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Chuncheon dakgalbi: In this dish, chunks of chicken are marinated in a sauce of chili paste and other spices, and stir-fried in a large pan with tteok, cabbage, carrots and slices of sweet potato.
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Bossam: The key to this dish is that the steamed pork is sliced into squares slightly larger than a bite, lovingly wrapped in a leaf of lettuce, perilla or kimchi, and daubed with a dipping sauce.
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Soy sauce crab: Ganjang gejang, or crab marinated in soy sauce, can be so addictive that it's often affectionately called "rice thief," the joke being that you keep eating more rice just so that you can have more gejang since it's just that good.
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Tteokbokki: This iconic red-orange street food is so popular there's an entire town in Seoul just devoted to the steamed and sliced rice cakes (tteok), cooked with fish cakes (oden) and scallions in a sweet and spicy sauce made of chili paste.
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Jjajangmyeon: Although originally a Chinese dish, Koreans have taken the noodles and created a thicker, sweeter version that holds only a vague resemblance to its Chinese predecessor.
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Jjambbong: This dish is the soupier, spicier counterpart to jjajangmyeon. Although noodles dominate in terms of sheer quantity, the onions and chili oil that flavor the soup are what really demand your attention.
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Galbi: Galbi, which means "rib," can technically come from pork and even chicken, but when you just say "galbi" sans modifiers, you're talking about thick slabs of meat marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, chopped garlic and sugar and grilled over a proper fire.
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Army Stew: This hodgepodge stew of sausages, Spam, American cheese, instant noodles, tteok and assorted vegetables dates back to the aftermath of the Korean War. Because meat was scarce, cooks found creative replacements in the surplus foods from the American army base in Seoul, hence the stew's name.
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Nakji bokkeum: In this enduring favorite, octopus is stir-fried with vegetables in a sauce of chili paste, chili powder, green peppers and chili peppers -- ingredients that would be spicy enough on their own, but which all congregate to create one extra fiery dish.
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Mudfish Soup: The selling point of this soup is the coarse yet satisfying texture of the mudfish and the vegetables -- mung bean sprouts, dried radish greens, sweet potato stems and most of all the thin, delicate outer cabbage leaves.
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Bulgogi: This well-known sweet meat dish, which has existed in some form for over a thousand years, was haute cuisine during the Joseon Dynasty.
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Dotorimuk: This light brown jello, made of acorn starch, is served cold, frequently with a topping of chopped leeks and soy sauce as a side dish, or as an ingredient in Dotorimuk salads and dotorimukbap (dotorimuk with rice).
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Hobakjuk: This viscous, yellow-orange juk, or porridge, gets its distinctive color and flavor from the pumpkin, its namesake and its main ingredient. The pumpkin is peeled, boiled, and blended with glutinous rice flour, and the result is a bowl of porridge so creamy, golden and sweet that in some ways it seems more pudding than porridge.
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Tteokguk (떡국): Originally tteokguk was strictly eaten on the first day of the Lunar New Year to signify good luck and the gaining of another year in age. But this dish of oval rice cake slices, egg, dried laver seaweed and occasionally dumplings in a meat-based broth is now eaten all year round, regardless of age or season.
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Naengmyeon: The cold buckwheat noodles are great as a lightweight lunch option or after Korean barbecue, as a way to cleanse the palate.
