My Experience Cooking Korean

Although I haven't had an occasion to eat any South Korean dishes, I have always enjoyed smelling the foreign aromas of Asian food. I was curious to see what kinds of flavors would accompany the everyday ingredients that comprise a Korean dish. I decided to try my hand at South Korean meals, making roast chicken and stir fried noodles.

The chicken was extremely easy to make. All that I had to do was place chicken breasts into a casserole dish; blend; soy sauce, olive oil,  ginger and garlic; and pour it over the chicken. Then I baked the chicken for forty-five minutes on one side and fifteen on the other.

Despite the ease of the recipe, the taste wasn't as alluring. The chicken came out slightly dry and extremely salty.  The flavor was adequate, once the overpowering saltiness died away. However, by the time you finished chewing you weren't thinking about the flavor as much as the desire water.


The stir fried noodles, on the other hand, were delicious. Not only did they taste wonderful, but it was a relaxing and enjoyable process. It was a manner of sautéing vegetables one at a time, mixing them in with four packets of Raman noodles and sauce left over from the chicken. The carrots were fairly easy to sauté, but it was a little difficult to find that "sweet spot" between too hard and too mushy. However, since they were watched carefully it wasn't impossible to reach. Also in the noodles were mushrooms, onions, green onions, and garlic. Perhaps the strangest part of this recipe was that in between sautéing each vegetable, I had to pull them out and place them with the pre-cooked noodles. This ended up making sense in the end; I was glad I didn't ignore the recipe.

It gave the noodles and vegetables a different flavor with each bite. If all of the vegetables were cooked at the same time some flavors would overpower others: onions erasing carrots, garlic overwhelming mushrooms, etc. However, with this method each bite had a slightly different flavor, depending on which vegetable was eaten.

In short, the noodles were a huge success. Since the recipe was fairly easy to follow and very relaxing to make, it is a recipe well worth the effort required. The chicken, on the other hand, was not as satisfying and left an overpowering salty taste.

I thoroughly enjoyed trying to create South Korean cuisine. Although I didn't get the desired result for one, I got a shockingly delicious result for the other. This inspires me to experiment with more South Korean dishes.