Korean cuisine

Korean cuisine is mostly spicy and would be impossible without large quantities of hot pepper. Korean meals often have red color because they are generously flavored with red hot chili pepper. One of the reasons for this may be because Korea is a country with hot climate, and pepper is one of the ingredients that help preserve the meals from spoiling for as long as possible. However, the Korean national cuisine was not always like this, because the pepper began to be used only after it was brought there from South America in the seventeenth century. An interesting fact is that meals with pepper were so highly valued since then that the terms "delicious" and "spicy" became two synonyms in the Korean language. The set of spices used in Korean cuisine is not very rich: the ingredients used most often are garlic and pepper, although Korean cooks often experiment with proportions and combinations which leads to the wide variety of meals.

Of course, the geographical position plays an important role and there are many similarities between two other biggest and most famous Asian cookeries - Chinese and Japanese. Just like the Chinese, the Koreans like unexpected combinations of products, and just like the Japanese they eat a lot of fish, in particular raw fish.

A Korean cooks mastery lies mainly in the ability to combine different spices and turn plain meal into a culinary masterpiece. The famous Korean carrots is just one example of such approach. Similarly to other Asian countries, rice is the major meal in Korea.