The summer is
coming on! It’s just May, but the weather is hot today. It’s not easy to eat
hot food in this weather, so I’ll recommend a ‘cool’ food. Many Koreans like to
eat cold noodles in summer, especially Naeng-myeon(냉면).
I found exact definition in Wikipedia.
“Naeng-Myeon is a long and thin hand-made noodles made
from the flour and starch of various ingredients: buckwheat (메밀, memil), potatoes, sweet potatoes, 칡냉면,
naengmyun made with the starch from arrowroot (darker color and chewier than
buckwheat noodles), and kudzu (칡, chik). Varieties with
ingredients such as seaweed and green tea are available.”
Actually, there
are two main kinds of Naeng-Myeon: Mul-Naengmyeon(물냉면)
and Bibim-Nangmyeon(비빔냉면). Mul-Naengmyeon(물냉면) is served as a cold soup with the noodles contained in soup made
from beef(육수), or dongchimi(동치미).
I like Mul-Naengmyeon more because the soup makes me cool and not spicy.
Bibim-Naengmyeon(비빔냉면) is served with a spicy dressing
made primarily from gochujang (red chili paste, 고추장)
and eaten all mixed. Many Koreans are always stressing about choosing between
two things because these two things are all delicious. If you can’t eat spicy
foods, you have to choose Mul-naengmyeon.
→ Mul-Naengmyeon
→ Bibim-Naengmyeon
Naengmyeon is served with iced meat broth, so
it’s very cool. Also there are boiled egg, cucumbers, slices of boiled beef, slice
of radish and so on. I’ll give you a hint with these ingredients. You have to
eat boiled egg first, because it protects the stomach walls. Naeng-myeon’s
noodles are made of buckwheat flour(메밀가루). This flour’s
particles are rougher than rice, so it’s easy to injure the stomach walls. Also
many people in Korea usually put spicy Mustard sauce (or Mustard oil) and
vinegar.
There
are many Naeng-myeon restaurants in Korea. The restaurants give some meat with
Naeng-myeon nowadays. 육쌈냉면 is popular restaurant of
Naeng-myeon. This restaurant’s dishes are cheap and delicious. They also serve delicious
charcoal-broiled pork. How about eat Naeng-myeon in lunch? J
물냉면 is a Korean dish that I was introduced to in my first year in South Korea. In those days I thought it was just okay, but now I like it a lot. My favorite place is 평양냉면 in 남대문 Market.
답글삭제Thanks for the tip on eating the egg first!