We put our hearts and souls into the food at our Seattle Korean restaurant because Korean food demands heart and soul from its chefs. It’s a part of Korean cuisine that is more important than the chili sauce, more important than the soy, and almost as important as the rice. Just as Korean food without rice can hardly be called a meal, so is Korean food without love hardly Korean food at all, and it is for this reason that the country has had such a notable history of cooking rice with unparalleled skill.
Indeed, Korea’s skill with rice is a famous one even among its rice-loving neighbors in East Asia. The housewives of the Joseon Dynasty could even produce rice dishes of different textures within the same iron pot. They would do this by piling the grains up in varying depths so that the rice would be exposed to different moisture levels. Such was the Korean rice-cooking art that it was noted in the writing of a famed courtier and scholar named Jang Young, who described Korean rice as “…very shiny and soft, and very fragrant. Throughout the pot, the rice is evenly cooked and glossy.”