We've learned to love koreanovelas and K-Pop as if those Korean cultural products were our own. Is it any surprise that we've also taken to Korean cuisine as if our own lolas had invented it from scratch?

That's because, as different as Korean cuisine seems at first glance from ours, it is surprisingly similar to Filipino cuisine once you dig deeper. "A lot of Korean dishes taste like local cuisine, but it's prepared in a more exotic manner," explains Pam Flores Garcia, proprietor of the venerable Korea Garden restaurant in Makati.

"Take japchae. It's a dish prepared close to our own sotanghon, which is smaller glass noodles," explains Garcia. "The kalbijjim (braised beef stew) is a distant cousin of our own mechado, minus the potatoes. And the gamjatang (pork bone stew) tastes like our bulalo but uses a different cut of meat."

Which is not to say the two cuisines are as peas in a pod—Korean cuisine, after all, descends from centuries-old court cuisine bearing influences from Japan and China, while Filipino cuisine is Spanish/Chinese/Malay in origin. But there's enough overlap to allow Filipinos to totally get on board with Korean food. 

Meat dishes like bulgogi and kalbijjim are favorite choices, as they're simple but flavorful—benefiting from a sublime blending of ingredients like sesame oil and soy sauce. Bulgogi is meat barbecued on a hemispherical bulgogi grill. They usually use beef, but you can also grab variants made from pork (dueji bulgogi),  chicken (tak bulgogi) or squid (ojingo bulgogi), among others. 

Whatever meat you prefer, "the basic timpla is the same for all kinds of meat," says Garcia. "It's usually a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, sugar, garlic, and onion leeks."
 
Pure Korean
Then there's kalbijjim—a braised short rib stew simmered slowly over low heat until the meat practically falls off the bone. The fatty meat creates a hearty stew that seems made for pouring over white rice. Kalbijjim derives its flavor from the marrow in the ribs, working in concert with the stew ingredients— "Soy sauce, sugar, sesame seeds. [The mixture] is boiled for hours and hours," explains Garcia. "If you have a pressure cooker, it makes [cooking time] faster." 

The sotanghon-like glass noodles that make up japchae are stir-fried in sesame oil with mushrooms, sliced carrots, onion, and spinach, then served as a side dish. "Those are served on special occasions in Korea, like anniversaries and birthdays,” Garcia tells us. 

It certainly wouldn't be a Korean spread without kimchi, the spicy, fermented vegetable that is Korea's national dish. Made from an endless variety of vegetables, kimchi derives its popularity from its simplicity and ready availability. 

Garcia, whose mother was an immigrant from Korea, remembers her mom's stories. 

"When my mom and her relatives were not very well off, kimchi was their staple dish. They could eat that with rice," she tells us. "They could make a lot of dishes with ordinary kimchi, like kimchi-jjigae, which is a kind of stew.”

"They would eat that for breakfast, lunch, dinner," says Garcia. "It's an all-around dish."
 
That's something to remember, the next time you're tempted to just have kimchi as a supporting player in your Korean food spread. If anything, this deceptively simple spicy pickled cabbage dish deserves star billing.