Celebrating Korean Thanksgiving with Traditional Chuseok Food
When you talk about Thanksgiving food, you think of roast turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and maybe some cranberry sauce! The family prepares traditional Chuseok food to celebrate Korean Thanksgiving in their ancestral towns in Korea. They have Chuseok food such as jeon, songpyeong, galbi jjim, and more! Discover more delicious Korean food for Chuseok in this article.
What is Chuseok?
Chuseok means Autumn Eve, which indicates the time of year it is celebrated: the very end of summer and the beginning of fall. The interesting thing to know about Chuseok is that most people try to prepare Korean Chuseok food using the new year’s crops. Thus, the large array of multi-coloured foods and ingredients.
Chuseok Food
Songpyeon (송편)
Songpyeon is glutinous rice cakes made with rice crops harvested on New Year's. The sweet and nutty rice cake is one of the Chuseok traditional food that Koreans prepare for the holiday that comes in different colours. To find out more about songpyeon, check out our other article here!
Galbi Jjim (갈비찜)
Galbi Jjim, Braised short ribs, has a sticky consistency that goes well with freshly cooked rice. It's a must Chuseok 2022 food you should try!
Jeon (전) – Fried pancake
This type of chuseok Korean food means tri-coloured jeon. People mix the ingredients of ham, crab sticks, and green onion, resulting in these beautifully colored and yummy fried pancake.
The type of jeon shown below is one of the many prepared during Chuseok (and any other large holiday). The perilla leaf (sesame leaf) is stuffed with beef and fried in egg and flour. It is both delicious and unique.
Saengseontwigim (생선튀김) - fried fish
Another typical dish that can be found during Chuseok is fried fish. Any type of fish can be used but most often you will find is the croaker fish, or jogi (조기) in Korea.
Drinks
Sikhye (식혜) – sweet rice drinks
Not only is this a super popular drink at the Korean saunas, but it is also a traditional drink during Chuseok. Sikhye is made by adding malt water to cooked rice and cooking it until its sweet.
Dongdongju (동동주) – fermented rice beverage
Many mysteries surround the difference between makgeolli and dongdongju. Simply put, dongdongju goes through a much quicker fermentation process and is the unfiltered version of makgeolli.
Written by Kristina Marchenko
