Kimchi is a fermented, salted cabbage that is the most representative side dish in Korea. There are so many different Korean dishes that use kimchi as an ingredient. Kimchi fried rice is my favorite go-to dish of all time. It is really easy and quick to make for beginners like me. As long as you have a jar of kimchi sitting in your fridge, you can make kimchi fried rice by using any kinds of vegetable or meat you have at home. People use many different ingredients and have different recipes for kimchi fried rice. Click here for MY kimchi fried rice recipe.
Korean fried chicken is another Korean dish that I love. It is really crunch on the outside while remaining juicy on the inside. There are many types of korean fried chicken depending on what parts of the chicken and toppings/sauce that are used. One of my favorite kind is called "ban-ban" fried chicken, which means "half-half". It comes with original fried chicken and yangnyeom fried chicken, which has sweet and spicy sauce on top.
Tteokbokki is a stir-fried rice cake dish with spicy sauce. It is the most popular street food in Korea. Besides rice cake, it usually comes with fish cakes, scallions, and boiled eggs. Some people add different kinds of noodles in tteokbokki, such as ramen and glass noodles. When I was going to school in Korea, my friends and I often went to a tteokbokki place nearby our school and shared it as an after-school snack.