KOREAN STREET FOOD VLOG #1// Gwangjang Market, Seoul

What's up guys! Today I'm here at Gwangjang Market in Seoul, South Korea, and I'm so excited to try some Korean street food. Let's go! So these are mung bean pancakes. It has bean sprouts, mung beans that are finely ground, and scallions and a little bit of flour, and they smell so amazing and I'm so excited to try. I want to cry. Like it's so good. It's so crispy and it's surprisingly light even though it's deep fried. Because the mung beans are stone ground, they have this grainy texture that allows the mung bean pancakes to be super crispy on the outside but very soft and pillowy and airy on the inside. It's definitely one of my favorite foods on a cold rainy day. And to pair it with makgeolli, I can't right now because I'm going to be filming later and going to different places and I will get red as f**k. So I can't, but together it is the match of the century. Chef's kiss. Now these are wanjas and they are Korean meatballs that are flattened and deep fried. They taste exactly like what would be inside a pork dumpling. So basically a pork dumpling without the skin. And it's so good. But personally, my favorite are the mung bean pancakes because this is their specialty. But if you come, try both. And all this was under 8,000 won, which is around $7 USD. And that is so reasonable. Definitely come here. The local markets have the best food. Trust me on this. Now we're at our second location and we're about to try some yukhoe. So yukhoe is Korean beef tartare and it's paired with Korean pear and an egg yolk. So I ordered the yukhoe bibimbap, which is with raw beef, some Korean pear, some cucumbers, and some baby sprouts. I posted this on my Instagram story a few days ago, but you always want to shake the rice bowl. And a lot of people were confused to what this did. It helps the rice release from the bowl much easily like that. So this place always comes with this radish beef bone broth and it smells amazing. This is also a dish that my mom does a really good job of. So I will be sharing the recipe on my channel. Yeah, but I'm really excited. I'm going to try the beef tartare first. Break the egg yolk and look at that. And you want to mix it a bit to make sure the egg coats the beef. This to me looks like the perfect bite. Raw egg, raw beef. I know a lot of people are going to get triggered by this, but hey, this is my food. And what am I going to say to that? Don't yuck my yum. Wow. So they use a lot of sesame oil and there's a hint of sugar. And the Korean pear is also so crunchy and sweet and it adds a great textural element. This is definitely something that you guys should try. It's super doable. All the ingredients you can find in abroad and I will be sharing that recipe too on my TikTok soon. Okay, the goods have been acquired. I'm about to try it. So this is hotteok and it's a very, very popular wintertime snack. You can think of it as a Korean donut. It's very chewy. It's filled with brown sugar and sometimes with some nuts and seeds. Today I went with the original and just had the brown sugar filling. As you can see, the brown sugar oozing out and it's caramelized beautifully and it's so crispy right here. I just know that as soon as I bite in, it's going to be crispy and ooey gooey inside. Okay, I'm going to give these a try. That's way too hot. Okay, I'm going to take a smaller bite. I'm so sorry. I want you to see how chewy this is. Look at that. Oh my god. I love fried food. I'm going to make my mom try this too. She's like literally smacking her lips right now. How is it? Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Okay, we're going to try more food because we're total fat asses but this is so effing good. This is crazy. So this is guabaegi and it's quite similar to youtiao in China but it's the sweet version of it. It was made by Chinese immigrants that came to Korea and this is a very Korean dessert. It's always in the traditional markets and you smell it everywhere. It's coated with cinnamon and very soft and pillowy and I know just by holding it how much air that's in this donut and I'm so excited to see. Look at the air pockets in this. It is incredibly light. I like that this place has more cinnamon than other places and it's super aromatic and it's just good. I don't even know how to like sell this to you guys. It's a donut. Of course it's gonna be good. Come on. So I got another one and this is a black sesame donut and it's filled with red bean paste and I don't know, I've only had, I've never had a black sesame donut before so I'm really excited. I don't really smell that too strong of black sesame but I think I'll have a better sense once I bite into it. I don't really taste any of the black sesame. This is a little bit disappointing. I don't think they use house-made red bean also so this one's like, I mean it's just like, it's good. Yeah it's like a fried donut but there's nothing special about it. It's whatever but the kkwabaegi is like very very good. So I just got my sikhye. Sikhye is, it's made with malt powder and some rice. There's a lot of sweetness in rice and by using sweet glutinous flour and malt powder it has that grainy nuttiness that I really love personally. So as you can see, you can see the rice kind of floating and it really makes a great topping. I would say that sikhye is Korea's boba. So I'm gonna give these a try. Oh that's good. So I mean I personally, I don't like sikhye that's like overly sweet. It's just the right amount of sweetness. It's a great way to end a long glutinous journey of fried food, of Korean beef tartare, of kkwabaegi, of donuts and it's nice and you should definitely give it a try. Peace out.