Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Street Food in Korea

The best part of walking down Myeongdong is trying all the street food vendors that set up camp there everyday. During the summer, it's the vendors that sell skewers of fruit, soft serve ice cream or fruit smoothies that do really well. During the winter, it's the hoduk (a Korean flat donut filled with brown sugar and nuts), bungeoppang (a fish shaped bread filled with red bean) or egg bread vendors that are popular.

My cousin Jung hasn't been to Korea in over 10 years so he is intrigued by the plethora of street food in Korea and is on a mission to try each thing once. One day, my cousin Ahjin and I were walking briskly to take cover inside a store and we turned around to ask Jung something and we saw him munching on this.
He was behind us the whole time, so we have no idea how he managed to get a corn dog so fast. haha. He's quick. BTW, they call corn dogs, hot dogs in Korea. This one is fried in batter and they stick french fries to it. Jung thinks it's genius. I think it's pretty funny. I guess it's great for those in a rush, you can get a corn dog and french fries all on one stick.

Waffles are sold everywhere in Korea too so Jung wanted to try a waffle as well. The waffles are really crispy, not very doughy at all. They put apple jam in the middle and you get a choice of vanilla, strawberry or chocolate whipped cream. Vanilla seemed like the least weird option to pair with apple jam so we went with that one.
They fold it in half and you eat it out of your hand.
Here's a hoduk vendor. The dough was almost deep fried. No wonder it was so good.
Here is a picture of egg bread. It tastes like pound cake and in the center they crack an egg in the batter, which cooks with the batter in the little mold. It's 1,000 won for one.
This is how bungeoppang is made. They fill the cast with batter, put the red bean inside, and close the mold and wait till it's cooked.
Jung has also undertaken the soju/makgeolli (Korean traditional rice wine)/Korean beer challenge as well, trying every single one in the supermarket. We keep telling him we think he has a drinking problem, but he's in denial. =)

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