Why do Korean households have 2 fridges? Spicy Road has good tip for a “spicy” weekend trip.

07Jun
by Kamila Pala

MODERN grey highways and high skyscrapers versus colorful ANCIENT royal palace… a weekend in the capital city of Korea, Seoul -over 10 million inhabitants- was impressive! The opportunity to explore history and the modern city at the same time doesn’t happen everyday – especially if you get the chance to visit a local family.

In most countries we have one fridge, not in Korea. ONE FRIDGE FOR THE FERMENTED CABBAGE (Kimchi)!! And another one for normal food. I love pickles but in Korea they are different, they use cabbage! Koreans eat in average 20 kilos of this super-spicy condiment per head every year. The quantities are so huge that every household would need to have a second fridge just for kimchi. To store it and to control proper fermentation process. In Korea, kimchi is consumed all the time and used for everything from burgers, pancakes, pizza, whatever you can imagine!

By the way, Koreans believe that the cabbage provides them with strength and health and that it is a miracle. It contains plenty of vitamins. I tasted it…. I never tasted anything so incredibly SPICY in my entire life!

Koreans have very good soups and I also love their barbecues! But I also love sushi and that was a pleasant surprise to me to find it on their menus. Koreans actually have their own kinds of sushi that I loved so much.

Here is my favourite RECIPE for KOREAN MAKI SUSHI ! I prepared it with my friend from Korea. The result was fantastic, both esthetically and gastronomically great. We started off early morning with all necessary ingredients carefully laid out in front of us. What do we need? And where should we buy it? In Asia, there is of course a better availability than in another places as there are specialized Japanese or Korean shops almost everywhere.

  • Rice can be either Japanese or Korean. Ideally, we cook it in the rice cooker
  • For the filling- a thin egg omelet, bacon sticks, surimi, yellow radish, cucumbers, steamed spinach, cooked carrot
  • We start to wrap it all in the black seaweed. We need a bamboo placemat
  • For seasoning: rice vinegar, soy sauce, wasabi. Time of preparation approximately one hour. Time to eat it? Anytime and very fast. We eat with chopsticks or hand
  • Basically a yummy delicacy

How is the Korean maki sushi different from the Japanese one? The Korean one is filled with 3-4 types of “filling”. The Japanese one always comprises just one ingredient, for instance cucumber. Very tasty. You won’t even need a second fridge to stock it!

Have a nice “tasty and spicy” day!

29 thoughts on “Why do Korean households have 2 fridges? Spicy Road has good tip for a “spicy” weekend trip.”

  11. y. prior

    I love this post! did not know about the 2 fridges, I so want to try kimchi – and cool to know the diff between Japanese and Korean sushi – hmmmm – and I like both – the simpler single ingredient ones and the more layered ones = and the pics made it come more alive.

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  15. Sartenada

    Again high quality post full with stunning photos. In Finland we have normally one fridge and one freezer. Some households have the third one also, because many Finns are hunting. Some households have their freezer full loaded with mushrooms and berries when autumn starts. Everyone can pick up them freely from our forests.

    Thank You for this post.

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