Ahh bibimbap, that staple Korean dish that has been exported internationally and can now be eaten pretty much anywhere around the world.
I actually ate my first bibimbap in Montreal in April of 2017 (pictured below), shortly after finding out I was going to be moving to Korea. My boss at my job at the time, at the international office of my university, took me out and treated me to a nice Korean meal as an introduction to things to come. It was quite delicious, but obviously it pales in comparison to what you can get in Korea itself.
Bibimbap literally means mixed rice. As we approach the Lunar New Year (Seollal), celebrated in many Asian countries, it's the perfect time to profile this iconic Korean dish. Bibimbap actually originated as a result of the Lunar New Year, as many Koreans wanted to get rid of all their leftover side dishes before the new year started. As such, they usually mixed all of their vegetables with a bunch of rice and ate it all on Lunar New Year's Eve. Bibimbap was also commonly eaten by farmers as it was one of the easiest ways to make food for a large group of people at once.
Bibimbap is typically comprised of a wide assortment of vegetables. Staple ingredients usually include cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, mushrooms, Chinese bell-flower, spinach, soybean sprouts, bracken and seaweed. This being Korea, kimchi can often be added to the mix, and it is always topped with an egg. Sometimes tofu or some meat, like beef, pork or chicken can be added, but this isn't necessary and the dish is quite delicious without the meat.
It's actually interesting, because the preparation of the dish varies from restaurant to restaurant. I've been to some places that serve you a bowl of rice and some red bean paste (that spicy Korean sauce that goes on almost everything) on the side, which you're then supposed to add into the bibimbap yourself, at your own pace. Other restaurants will serve a complete bibimbap, with the rice and sauce already mixed in. Some restaurants might even serve all of this in a hot pot (known as dolsot bibimbap) and put in a raw egg instead of a cooked one, allowing you to mix everything around and watch it as it cooks. The bibimbap pictured above comes pre-mixed, and it's really delicious. What's nice is that sometimes you'll get a bibimbap that has all the vegetables separated, and so it's really colourful when you receive your food!
There are obviously a bunch of different varieties of the dish, and one of the most unique bibimbaps that I ate was when I visited this village called Jeongseon near the mountains and they served a wild-mountain-vegetable bibimbap, which featured a nice variety of mushrooms, and it was really delicious.
At the end of the day, bibimbap is that one dish that I return to again, and again, and again. It's something that you can never get tired of, and a dish that I love to indulge in as much as possible.
-Daniele
