Korean cuisine — Joseon surasang · 115

Gochugaru is dried chili flake. Gochujang is a fermented paste of chili, soybean and glutinous rice. They are not interchangeable spoon-for-spoon. Banchan are the meal's vegetable and ferment layer. Restaurants refill them; at home they are yesterday's pickles, namul and a new kimchi.

It is a social and restaurant form. Weeknight tables more often hold rice, kimchi and a jjigae or leftover grilled fish. Kimjang is the seasonal making and sharing of winter kimchi, typically in late autumn, now recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage. They are the domestic norm, paired with a spoon. First-timers are not judged for asking for wood, but metal is not a tourist stunt.

Capsicum reached Korea after the late-sixteenth-century wars and trade. Older white kimchi styles never disappeared. Korean cuisine, or 한식 (hansik), is built on rice, soup and a ring of banchan — kimchi, namul greens, jeon pancakes — rather than a single plated entree. Gochujang, doenjang and ganjang supply the fermented bass line; gochugaru supplies the heat.