Korean vegetables

The lotus is a lovely plant, and in Korea every single part of it has a purpose. The flowers are used for tea, the leaves for rice, the seeds for herbal medicine and the stems for flavoring (dried stems can be used in pickling jars). But it’s the roots that are the best known and

Travel along the southwest coast in summer and you may come across a bright green, succulent-like plant stretching upwards like a tiny tree from the mudflat. This is hamcho (함초, samphire or glasswort, Salicornia herbacea), a beach green once known only to locals and now popular across the South Korean peninsula. It’s known colloquially as

Korean food isn’t always spicy—there are plenty of mild, savory dishes without that well-known spicy kick. But spicy flavors are popular, and we have the gochu (고추, chili) to thank for that. Harold McGee tells us there are 25 species of chilies in the world, five of which have been domesticated. Here in Korea, we have Capsicum annuum, the oldest

Sometimes, over here at bburi kitchen, we’re guilty of romanticizing the past. “Our ancestors ate so healthily,” we’ll sigh. Or: “They used up every last scrap! Nothing went to waste back then.” While neither of us would actually trade our modern lives for the hardships of years gone by, some older ways of eating are

There’s an old song in Korean about doraji (도라지, bellflower root). After Arirang, the Doraji Taryeong is Korea’s second most-known folk song. The lyrics vary from region to region but all of them are narrated by someone who has gone deep into the mountains to look for the white doraji. “Just one or two

Of all the vegetables in the traditional Korean diet, godeulbbaegi (고들빼기, Crepidiastrum sonchifolium) is the most intensely bitter. With its short, knobby tuber and long, green leaves, godeulbbaegi resembles a stunted parsnip, and it’s not a stretch to imagine the root as a grumpy little man, rooty arms crossed beneath a gritty, puckered face. The

Jirisan, or Mt. Jiri, has a special place in the minds and hearts of Koreans—it’s often viewed as a wild place, a vast place, a place where nature still has some power. It’s also unique in that the mountain crosses the borders of three different provinces: North and South Jeolla, and South Gyeongsang. We came

Digging into the story of cham-namul turned out to be a case study in mistaken identities, a plant world mystery of invasion and identity theft. First of all, there’s no good translation of cham-namul in English, and that’s because it’s very very much a local Korean ingredient. Cham-namul, or Pimpinella brachycarpa, has been growing in