Samgak Kimbap

Well since I wasn't up to much today I thought I would share another food lesson with y'all today.

Samgak Kimbap is not something you'd publicly admit to saying was your favorite Korean food. After all - the only place to buy it is at a convenience store. As Susan puts it "It would be like saying your favorite American food is a ham sandwich from 7-11". They have Samgak Kimbap in Japan too, although the Japanese call it onigiri. (Susan or Naoe, tell me if I am wrong here).

Harland and I call them triangles because for a long time we had no idea what they were called. You can usually buy one for 700 won. That's 70 cents, folks! If you are really hungry you can buy two. Sometimes they come in packs of two. I like them, but they are really mostly salted seaweed and rice. There is a little bit of paste in the middle. Now because my Korean language skills are dubious at best, I never know what will be in the middle of my samgak kimbap. It's always a fun surprise! I wasn't very hungry the day I got this one (these pictures were taken last week) and I think this one may have been pork or chicken based. Usually if I am really hungry I'll get two different ones for variety.

One of the coolest things about samgak kimbap is how it is packaged. I'll take you through the process. First, here is one ready to be opened!


Next you peel the center strip away. It is similar to the strip on a package of gum. Rip!


Then you pull the plastic away from each side. This is really an ingenious way of packaging. The seaweed does not touch the rice, therefore, the seaweed is not soggy after sitting in a fridge for a while! I don't know how long these things sit there (and I would rather not, thank you) but anyone who has every tried to take sushi home knows seaweed gets soggy in no time. Here is a picture of the wrapper taken away from one of the sides.


And here is the samgak kimbap after I have taken a bite! Yum! Sometimes the fillings are just very salty, but most of the time they are very spicy. This one was spicy and it had something chewy like beans, Yummers!

Maybe some of you have heard about kimbap - it is like a sushi roll but Koreans usually have cooked beef, radish, egg, and cucumber in them. Sometimes they have tuna in them. The ones here on base have spam in them. One day soon I'll order some and take a picture so you can compare the triangular kind to the "real" kind.