#mandu is handmade but rice cakes are not

[magistralucis]

@absolut--kurant!

[lennonhead]

I will describe my impressions of Seoul later, but today I went to a North Korean restaurant. this was a major goal of mine

the kimchi is pale and watery but not lacking in flavour. it's more of a sweet pickle taste and while I don't think it would make a good kimchi jjigae it tastes better as a side dish than southern kimchi

and bibim naengmyeon. as a great anticlimactic moment... it tastes completely normal. my entire life, it turns out I have been having authentic naengmyeon

the restaurant also has barbecue, and the huge dumplings they eat in the north, and I'm curious about those too, but I should probably rest satisfied that they taste exactly the same as always

as a side note, another one of my favourite Korean dishes, mandu kalguksu (handmade noodles with dumplings in a bone broth), happens to be from North Korea as well. in the south, they have the soup with dumplings and sliced rice cake instead. the slightly warmer climate, I suppose...

[thelasttime]

happy first and second day in seoul!!! we landed and got ourselves some super yummy mandu and rice cake soup!! then we walked around and then ate dinner at a bbq place that apparently marinates for 15 days before they grill it 😌😌 anyways it was the best bbq of my life … before tonight when i ate bbq again and THAT was the best of my life

second day was so good! actually got some good sleep and we ate triangle kimbap from the convenience store before walking an extremely beautiful world heritage site which was the royal palace for kings built back in the 1400s!! and then we went to a market for some really good food (more mandu, handmade noodles, donuts, fishcake)!! then we walked around some more and then had dinner at a really good bbq place where they grilled the meat peeeeerfectly!! finished off the day with shaved ice dessert hehe

[fenithephoenix]

More dumpling thoughts occurred to me just now

Veggie dumplings < chicken dumplings < pork dumplings < beef dumplings < SHRIMP DUMPLINGS

Boiled < fried < steamed

I’m half Chinese so we go out for dim sum, which is essentially Chinese brunch. Got lots of dumplings, lots of buns, lots of rice. Definitely not a natural habitat for vegans. But it’s really good. As I’ve had it, it ranges widely from “weird” things like chicken feet, squid, octopus, thousand-year-old egg, and cow intestine (we call it “tripe”. I personally dont like it but my entire fam does) to “regular” things like dumplings of all sorts, sticky rice in banana/lotus leaf, BBQ pork buns, egg tarts, and lots more! My favourite is called Har Gao (Ha Gao?). It’s basically a really nicely steamed dumpling with shrimp in it. Very simple, very warm, very good. Throw in some chives (? I think it’s chives ?) and you’ve got yourself some Har Gao! 11/10 favourite Chinese dumpling.

My other half of my fam is South Korean (I realize now that absolutely no one asked for my family origin nor did anyone ask for my opinion on dumplings, but I can’t sleep and I’m too far gone to stop now) and we go out to get Korean food pretty often. My personal favourite dish to get is called duk mandu guk. I like to think about it as the Korean equivalent of chicken noodle soup. It’s beef broth (guk) with beef/veggie dumplings (mandu) and rice cakes (duk), with a beaten egg, some sliced veggies, dried seaweed, beef strips, and garnish! 15/10 if you get it from the right place on a cold day! (The best mandu I’ve ever had were the handmade ones my Korean friend’s grandmother made for us every Monday after skateboarding lessons! Since then, no restaurant has compared to handmade mandu.)

And there you have it! My opinions on dumplings from both halves of my family’s heritage. Might add more later, cause I know a fair bit about momos (Tibetan) and gyoza (Japanese), and I really like them a lot. And who knows, maybe I’ll graduate to talking about different raviolis? I also am a huge fan of Italian food.

If you got this far, thanks for reading lmao I should be asleep its 1:30 am :))

(I dont own any of these pics i found them on Pinterest. I am also not a food expert, I just have opinions about dumplings.)

hi i am once again having a mild gender crisis but this time I’m also kinda hungry so just for fun reblog/comment your thoughts on gender or dumplings pls I wanna hear thoughts on both topics

Here I’ll start us off:

I really want shrimp dumplings rn but it’s also 1 am I already brushed my teeth and am in my jammies in bed

Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up early before class and make miso soup, that’s the second best thing

Also gender is a fucking weird thing. Like, who decides what’s considered “feminine” or “masculine”?

Swords are apparently “masculine” but i think anyone can do the stabby stabby

Am I a girl? Am I a boy? Am I neither? Hell if I know. Why cant I just exist genderless in the meaningless void that is life?

*insert “I guess I am a sandwich” pic*

No I’d rather be a dumpling

Comment your thoughts!