The cuisine varies seasonally, and especially during winter, traditionally relies much on kimchi and other pickled vegetables preserved in big ceramic containers stored underground in the outdoor courtyard. Preparation of Korean food is generally very labour-intensive.

Korean royal cuisine, once only enjoyed by the royal court of the Joseon period, take hours and days to prepare. It must harmonise warm and cold, hot and mild, rough and soft, solid and liquid, and a balance of presentation colours. It is often served on hand-forged bronzeware or bangjjaa. The foods are served in a specific arrangement of small dishes alternating to highlight the shape and colour of the ingredients.

Some of these traditional royal cuisines, which can cost as much as US$265 per person excluding drinks, include serving by exclusive waiters and can be found at high-end restaurants in select locations within the city of Seoul. Imperial cuisine has received a recent boost in popularity, due to Dae Jang Geum, a Korean television drama very popular in many parts of Asia, about a humble girl becoming the royal head chef during the Joseon period.

The Dishes

Much of Korean cuisine consists of simple dishes such as preserved food. It is known for its strong and pungent flavours. Many Korean banchan rely on fermentations for flavour and preservation, resulting in a tangy, salty and spicy taste. Certain regions are especially associated with some dishes (for example, the city of Jeonju with Bibimbap) either as a place of origin or for a famous regional variety. Restaurants will often use these famous names on their signs or menus (compare Chicago-style pizza).

Light Dishes

These light dishes are often sold by street cart vendors and are generally considered to be snacks rather than a complete meal. Many street carts are open late and even serve alcoholic beverages with the food. Bingsu is a refreshing iced treat popular in the summer, whereas warm soup, gimbap, hottteok, and bugeo-ppang are more popular in the fall and winter.

• Kimbap (or Gimbap,"seaweed rice"): Rice and strips of vegetables, egg, and meat, rolled in seaweed and sliced into bite-sized pieces. Unlike Japanese futomaki sushi rolls, rice is seasoned with salt and sesame seed oil.


• Mandu : A dumpling typically filled with pork or beef, vegetables, special noodles, tofu and kimchi. These can be prepared boiled, pan-fried, or steamed.


• Pajeon : Pancake made mostly of eggs and flour, with green onion, oysters, or fresh baby clams cooked on frying pans


• Bindaetteok: Pancake made of ground mung beans, with green onions, kimchi, or peppers cooked on frying pans.


• Soondae : Korean sausage made of chitterlings stuffed with a mixture of boiled sweet rice, oxen or pig's blood, potato noodle, mung bean sprouts, green onion, etc.


• Ddeokbokki :A broiled dish which is made by sliced rice cake, seasoned beef, fish cakes, and vegetable with gochujang.

Main Meat Dishes

At traditional restaurants, meats are cooked at the centre of the table over a charcoal grill, surrounded by various banchan and individual rice bowls. The cooked meat is then cut into small pieces and wrapped with fresh lettuce leaves, with rice, thin slice of garlic, ssamjang (mixture of gochujang and dwenjang), and other seasoning.

• Bulgogi: Thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar, green onions and black pepper, cooked on a grill at the table. Bulgogi literally means "fire meat". Variations include pork (Dweji bulgogi), chicken (Dak bulgogi), or squid (Ojingeo bulgogi).


• Galbi:Pork or beef ribs, cooked on a metal plate over charcoal in the centre of the table. The meat is sliced thicker than bulgogi. It is often called "Korean BBQ", and can be seasoned or unseasoned. A variation using seasoned chicken is called (Dakgalbi).


• Jokbal: Unseasoned pork bacon cut from the belly, served in the same fashion as galbi. Sometimes cooked on a grill with kimchi troughs at either side. Commonly grilled with garlic and onions, dipped in ssamjjang and wrapped in lettuce leaves.


• Hoe \hö\ : Raw seafood dish dipped in gochujang or soy sauce with wasabi, served with lettuce or sesame leaves.


• Makchang: Grilled pork large intestines prepared like samgyeopsal and galbi. Often served with a light doenjang sauce and chopped green onions. Very popular in Daegu and the surrounding Gyeongsang region.


• Gobchang: Similar to makchang except prepared from the small intestines of pork (or ox).


• Sinseollo: Korean style meat and vegetable lasagna.

Soups & Stews

• Budae jjigae ("army base stew") : Soon after the Korean War, meat was scarce in Seoul. Some people made use of surplus foods from US Army bases such as hot dogs and canned ham (such as Spam) and incorporated it into a traditional spicy soup. This budae jjigae is still popular in South Korea, and the dish often incorporates such more modern ingredients such as instant ramen noodles.


• Doenjang jjigae : Soybean paste soup, served as the main course or served alongside a meat course. It contains a variety of vegetables, shellfish and tofu, including small mussels, shrimp and/or large anchovies. Usually, anchovies were used for preparing base stock, and were put out before adding main materials.


• Cheonggukjang jjigae: Soup made from strong-smelling thick soybean paste.


• Gamjatang ("potato stew"): A spicy soup with pork spine, vegetables (especially potatoes) and hot peppers. The vertebrae are usually separated. This is often a late night snack but is also served for a lunch or dinner.


• Haejangguk : A favourite hangover cure consisting usually of meaty pork spine, dried cabbage, coagulated ox blood (similar to blood pudding), and vegetables in a hearty beef broth. Legend has it that soon after World War II, a restaurant that invented this stew was the only place open in the Jongno district when the curfew at the time lifted at 4 a.m.


• Jeongol : A traditional spicy Korean stew, consisting of various types of seafood and vegetables. It is generally served on a burner.


• Kimchi jjigae: A soup made of mainly Kimchi with pork and tofu. It is a common lunch meal or accompanimant to a meat course. It is normally served in a stone pot, still boiling when it arrives at the table.


• Mae-woon tang : A refreshing hot & spicy fish soup.


• Bo Luc Lac : Beef cut into cubes and marinated, served over greens, and sauteed onions and tomatoes. Eaten with rice. Another dish with French influence.


• Samgyetang : A soup made with Cornish Game Hens that are stuffed with ginseng, a hedysarum, sweet rice, jujubes, garlic, and chestnuts. The soup is traditionally eaten in the summer.


• Seolleongtang Ox leg bone soup simmered for more than 10 hours until the soup is milky-white. Usually served in a bowl containing glass noodles and pieces of beef. Green onion and black pepper are condiments.


• Sundubu jjigae : A thick spicy stew made with soft tofu. Traditionally, the diner cracks a raw egg in it while it's still boiling

Mixed Rice

• Bibimbap ("mixed rice"): Rice topped with vegetables, beef and egg, and served with a dollop of chili pepper paste. A variation of this dish, dolsot bibimbap, is served in a heated stone bowl, in which a raw egg is cooked against the sides of the bowl. Yukhoe is a popular version, comprising raw beef strips with raw egg and a dash of soy sauce mixed with Asian pear and gochujang. Everything (seasonings, rice and vegetables) is stirred together in one large bowl and eaten with a spoon.


• Hoedeopbap \hweh-dup-bahp :Cubed raw fish mixed with fresh vegetables and rice and gochujang.


• Com chien Duong Chau (Com chiên Duong Châu): a very popular and commonly eaten South Korea adaptation of the Chinese "Yang Chow fried rice".

Noodles

Naengmyeon (North Korea: Raengmyon, "cold noodles"): This summer dish consists of several varieties of thin, hand-made buckwheat noodles, and is served in a large bowl with a tangy iced broth, raw julienned vegetables and fruit, and often a boiled egg and cold cooked beef. This is also called Mul ("water") Naengmyeon, to distinguish Bibim Naengmyeon, which has no broth and is mixed with gochujang.

Japchae: Boiled dangmyeon or potato noodle, steamed spinach, roasted lengthwise-cut beef, roasted sliced onion, roasted lengthwise-cut carrot are mixed with seasoning by soy sauce, sesame oil and half-refined sugar.

Jajangmyeon : A variation on a Chinese noodle dish that is extremely popular in Korea. It is made with a black bean sauce, usually with some sort of meat and a variety of vegetables including zucchini and potatoes. Usually ordered with delivery, much like pizza.

KalguksuBoiled flat noodles, usually in a broth made of anchovies and sliced zucchini.

Ramyeon: Spicy variation of Japanese Ramen, usually cooked with vegetables and meats.

Banchan (side dishes)

Kimchi (or Gimchi or Kimchee) : Vegetables (usually cabbage, white radish, or cucumber) commonly fermented in a brine of ginger, garlic, green onion and chilli pepper. There are infinite varieties (at least as many as there are households), which are served as side dishes. Koreans traditionally made enough kimchi to last for the entire winter season, although refrigerators and commercial bottled kimchi made this practice less common.

Kongnamul : Soybean sprouts, usually eaten in boiled and seasoned banchan. Soybean sprouts are also the main ingredient in kongnamul-bap (sprouts over rice), kongnamul-guk (sprout soup), and kongnamul-gukbap (rice in sprout soup).

Desserts

• Tteok: A chewy cake made from either pounded short-grained rice (??, metteok), pounded glutinous rice (??, chaltteok), or glutinous rice left whole, without pounding (??, yaksik). They are served either cold (filled or covered with sweetened mung bean paste, red-bean paste, raisins, a sweetened filling made with sesame seeds, mashed red beans, sweet pumpkin, beans, dates, pinenuts and/or honey), usually served as dessert or snack. Sometimes cooked with thinly-sliced beef, onions, oyster mushrooms, etc. to be served as a light meal.


• Songpyeon : Chewy stuffed tteok (rice cake) served at Chuseok (Mid-Autumn Festival) decorated with pine needle. Honey or another soft sweet material, or kidney bean is found inside.


• Yakshik : A dessert made from a sweet rice, chestnut, pine nut, jujube and raw sugar.


• Chapssaltteok : A kind of Tteok filled with sweetened bean paste. Similar to Japanese Mochi.

Snacks

Snacks play an important social role in Korean culture. In Korea, snack food may be purchased from street carts during the day, and at night many streets are filled with small tents that sell inexpensive food, drinks and alcohol. At the street carts, customers may eat standing beside the cart or have your food wrapped-up to take home. Most Korean people consider the food sold here as a snack and is not usually eaten as the main meal. Seasons also have unique specialties: bingsu is a refreshing iced treat in the summer, whereas warm soup, gimbap, hotteok, and bungeo-ppang are enjoyed in the fall and winter.

• Kimbap: Kimbap or Gimbap is a very popular snack in Korea. It consists of cooked rice, sesame oil, salt, and sesame seeds, to which a small amount of vinegar and sugar are often added as seasonings. Then it is placed on a sheet of dried laver. The seasoned rice is spread on the laver, and the fried egg, carrot, strips of ham, seasoned ground beef or seasoned fish cakes, pickled radish, seasoned spinach, and seasoned gobo and cucumber are then placed close together on the rice, then rolled in the manner of Japanese sushi. Today, there are all kinds of gimbap: tuna, cheese, bulgogi, vegetable,and more.


• Buchimgae/Jeon: Fermented kimchi (kimchijeon) or seafood (haemul pajeon) is mixed into flour, and then fried in an oiled pan. This dish tastes the best when it is hot dipped in soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper powder.


• Hotteok: This is similar to pancakes. Melted brown sugar, honey, and broken pieces of peanut and cinnamon are important fillings. Vegetables are sometimes added to the batter.Hotteok is usually eaten during the winter months to "warm up" the body from the sweet and warm syrup within the pancake.


• Bungeo-ppang/Gukwa-Ppang/Gyeran-ppang: Bungeoppang is a fish-shaped pastry that is usually filled with sweet red bean paste and then baked in a fish-shaped mould . It is very chewy and crispy on the outside. Gukwa-ppang is almost the same as bungeo-ppang, but it is shaped like a flower. Gyeran-ppang tastes similar to bungeo-ppang, but it is shaped like a seashell.

Beverages

Alcoholic beverages

Soju is a clear spirit which was originally made from grain, and is now also made from sweet potatoes. Soju made from grain is considered superior (as is also the case with grain vs. potato vodka). Soju is around 22% ABV and is a favorite beverage of hard-up college students, hard-drinking businessmen, and blue-collar workers.
Yakju is a refined pure liquor fermented from rice, with the best known being cheongju. Takju is a thick unrefined liquor made from grains, with the best known being makkoli, a white, milky rice wine traditionally drunk by farmers.
Korean wines are generally divided into fruit wines, and herbal wines. Acacia, maesil plum, Chinese quince, cherry, pine fruits, and pomegranate are most popular; and ginseng based medicinal wines, called insamju, are often diluted and sold to the west as energy drinks equivalent to Red Bull.

Non alcoholic beverages

• Insam cha: Korean ginseng tea
• Saenggang cha: Tea made from ginger root.
• Sujeonggwa: Dried persimmon punch.
• Sikhye: Sweet rice beverage
• Yujacha: Citron tea
• Bori cha: Roasted barley tea
• Oksusu cha : Roasted corn tea
• Sungnyung: Roasted rice tea