South Korean food is no longer restricted to Korean BBQ. Menus feature foods such as bibimbap and kimchi, and traditional flavours have been mixed with other culinary traditions to create a new class of Korean tacos and burgers. Korean food is one of the healthiest in the world, which contributes to its popularity, but one component of the meal that is sometimes forgotten is Korean sweets.
It's terrible since Korean sweets are suitable for practically every situation, whether you're seeking something to calm you down in the scorching summer heat or to keep you warm during the harsh winter. These are the Korean goodies that you've been ignoring.
Yeot
Yeot is a kind of South Korean sweet made from sweet potatoes, corn and steamed glutinous rice. A wide range of yeot sweets are available, including boriyeot (made with barley), kkaeyeot (rolled in sesame seeds), and hobakyeot (made with pumpkin).
It is possible to make these conventional goods in liquid or solid form. While liquid yeot is frequently used as a sugar substitute in a variety of sweet recipes, solid yeot is typically eaten as a snack.
Dalgona Candy
South Korea is the birthplace of the classic and nostalgic confection known as dalgona. Recently, the famous show Squid Game has helped to popularise it. Melting sugar and combining it with baking soda makes dalgona. The mixture ought to begin to froth and take on the appearance of creamed coffee.
It is poured out onto a smooth surface, where it is flattened into a thin disc and moulded to form a shape before the texture becomes brittle and solidifies. The key to eating dalgona is to avoid breaking it by eating around the pattern; some street food sellers will give kids another dalgona if they manage to break off the outside portion of the candy without destroying the form.
Chapssaltteok
Red bean paste and glutinous rice are used to make the South Korean dessert, chapssaltteok. Some people sometimes call chapssaltteok mochi because of its striking resemblance to the Japanese rice cake. The dish is highly popular to make at home, especially for kids and is known for its dense, chewy texture.
Because matcha green tea powder is used, the Korean variant is often green on the outside. Students who have a big test coming up are sometimes offered chapssaltteok in the hopes that it may bring them luck.
Baekseolgi
Typically, this traditional Korean rice cake is consumed on a number of festive occasions. After carefully combining rice flour, sugar, water, and salt, the cake is steamed until it turns light and chewy. Baekseolgi is typically produced to celebrate one hundred days after a baby is born because the dessert is always white, signifying innocence and purity. While it is usually served plain, garnishes such as nuts or dried fruit are occasionally added.
Jeonggwa
A wide variety of Korean-style candies is known as jeonggwa, and they are typically made using seeds, sliced fruits, vegetable stems, or roots. Usually, a syrup made of sugar or honey is poured over the slices, and they are then allowed to dry until they get their crispy, somewhat chewy texture.
The ingredients may also be mashed after cooking to the desired consistency. Jeonggwa can be eaten as an appetiser, a sweet snack, or a side dish. The most well-liked kinds include ginseng, lotus root, ginger, and yuja jeonggwa.
Yugwa
Yugwa is a traditional Korean delicacy made of pounded glutinous rice combined with water, cheongju (rice wine), and honey. The mixture is formed into the required shapes, which are then deep-fried and covered in puffed rice, honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, or cinnamon.
Once a typical dessert offered during Seollal (Korean New Year), these crispy delicacies were only presented to the nobles. In addition to the basic white variety, yugwa may be coloured with natural food colourings and flavoured. The most popular yugwa types are the oval-shaped and elongated gangjeong, the flat kind called sanja, and the residual yugwa-based binsa-gwa.
Bukkumi
Bukkumi is a classic South Korean tteok rice cake that is pan-fried. Typically, ingredients for this rice cake include sugar, honey, cinnamon, roasted and crushed sesame seeds, white mung bean paste, and glutinous rice or sorghum flour. In order to make flat rice cakes that are filled with ingredients and folded into the shape of a half-moon, rice flour or sorghum flour is combined with water. After being filled, bukkumi is covered in honey and frequently has shredded chestnuts, pumpkin seeds, or jujube added as a garnish. Typically, bukkumi is served with a cup of coffee or tea as a snack or dessert.