Jeonju, Korea
Bibimbap
Rice, vegetables, gochujang, an egg — a Korean bowl that's photographed for its arrangement and eaten by mixing it apart.
Built to be destroyed.
Bibimbap is plated for the photograph that lives one second. Spinach, bean sprouts, fern bracken, julienned carrot, courgette, mushrooms, beef, an egg yolk — each in its own quadrant. The first thing the eater does is take a spoon and stir everything into a uniform red mass. The arrangement is for the eye; the eating is for the mouth.
4 · Plate
Jeonju, Korea
Bibimbap
Rice, vegetables, gochujang, an egg — a Korean bowl that's photographed for its arrangement and eaten by mixing it apart.
A dish from Jeonju in North Jeolla Province, a Korean food capital whose cuisine is built on more vegetables, more colours, and more fermented sides than any other regional tradition in the country. Bibimbap (비빔밥, “mixed rice”) is the form that exports best, but Jeonju also gave Korea its kongnamul-gukbap, its hanjeongsik banquet tradition, and its makgeolli rice wine.
The trick of the dish is the proportions. Too much rice and the vegetables vanish. Too much gochujang and you taste only the chili paste. The Korean rule of thumb is a tablespoon of paste per bowl, sesame oil to coat the rice, and an egg yolk to bind — and only then the stir.
Dolsot or nothing.
Served in a screaming-hot stone bowl, the rice on the bottom forms a thin crispy crust — *nurungji* — that's the best part of the dish. Sesame oil hits the bowl before the rice does; that's where the scent comes from. A cold ceramic bowl gives you a salad with rice.