Gimbap

📖What it is

• The name joins gim (dried seaweed) and bap (cooked rice). The rice is lightly seasoned with salt and sesame oil, and the finished roll is often brushed with more sesame oil.
• Common fillings are yellow pickled radish (danmuji), egg, spinach, carrot, burdock root, ham and beef. Shops also offer tuna, kimchi, bulgogi and cheese rolls.
• It looks like a sushi roll but tastes quite different: the rice has no vinegar, the fillings are usually cooked rather than raw, and it isn't normally dipped in soy sauce.
• Chungmu-gimbap comes from the port city now called Tongyeong: thin rolls of plain rice, served with spicy squid and radish kimchi on the side.
• Mayak-gimbap is the tiny roll made famous by Seoul's Gwangjang Market, eaten with a mustard and soy dip. Mayak means narcotic, a joke about how hard it is to stop eating them.
• Samgak-gimbap is a triangle of rice wrapped in seaweed, sold in convenience stores with many different fillings.

🥢How to eat it

1. 1Pick up one slice at a time with chopsticks, or with a toothpick if you're given one. Yellow pickled radish and kimchi usually come on the side.
2. 2It's a classic partner for tteokbokki: many people dip a slice into the spicy sauce.

🏛️History

• The origin is debated. One common view is that it grew out of Japanese rolled sushi (norimaki), which spread in Korea during the colonial period. Another traces it to Korea's older custom of wrapping rice and side dishes in seaweed, recorded in the Joseon era as bokssam.
• The word gimbap appears in a 1935 Korean newspaper. For a time it was used alongside the loanword norimaki before gimbap became the standard word.