Samgyeopsal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Samgyeopsal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Samgyeopsal being grilled with sliced onions and garlic on a hot plate. |
||||||||
| Korean name | ||||||||
|
Samgyeopsal (IPA: /samgjʌpsal/) is a popular Korean dish. Commonly served as an evening meal, it consists of thin slices of pork belly meat (similar to uncured bacon), served in the same fashion as galbi, with the meat flavored with garlic, salt and sesame oil and cooked on a grill at the diners' table. A slice of cooked meat is placed inside a leaf of lettuce or some other green leafy vegetable, along with some cooked rice and some ssamjang (a paste made out of a mixture of various ingredients, including chili paste (gochujang) and soybean paste (doenjang)), and eaten out of one's hand. It is also common to serve large green chilies, which are not spicy, and slices of raw garlic which are dipped in ssamjang, as well as a spring onion salad with the meal to relieve the greasiness of the pork.
Soju, a Korean alcoholic beverage, is commonly served with samgyeopsal. It is typically inexpensive; dinner costs are usually around ₩10,000 (roughly $10) per person, including drinks.
Due to the low cost of samgyeopsal, other cuts of pork are often overlooked in Korea. This has created the situation of overconsumption, and thus shortage, of pork belly meat in Korea, which has forced many restaurants to import the belly portion of the pork from foreign countries such as Canada. Recently, there has been a campaign in Korea to encourage consumers to purchase other cuts of pork in order to solve this issue of unbalance in pork consumption.
[edit] Name
The name can be translated as Three (sam) layered (gyeop) meat (sal), of course hinting at the three layers that are visible in the meat. You can also find Ogyeopsal, where O stands for five.
[edit] See also
