What I eat at a Korean school cafeteria: Samgyeopsal

Welcome to the first ever edition of "What I eat at a Korean school cafeteria!". When I was hired by my elementary school, I took up the meal allowance option to avoid preparing my own lunch. Little did I know it would take me on a culinary journey discovering Korea's most popular and lesser known dishes outside the peninsula's borders. Today we sink our chopsticks into samgyeopsal.

Literally translated, samgyeopsal means "three layered flesh." The cuts are a combination of lean meat and fat from a pig's belly. The common way of eating samyeopsal is to take sanchu, a green lettuce leaf, put meat, grilled garlic, peppers, gochujan sauce and apply the Korean "Golden Rule"

eat it in one bite! As my colleague Joseph told me, if you don't follow the "Golden Rule" You are not eating samyeopsal properly.

At restaurants, the client normally grills the meat and garlic on a grill, but the hardworking cooks at my cafeteria did all the hard labor. Plus I don't think it would be the best time to conduct a grill operating class with 200 plus elementary school kids!

The other foods on my plate, apart from sanchu and kimchi, are not necessarily things that are served with samgyeopsal. Gosari, is a river fern that tastes a little bit like mushroom and is very chewy. The tofu soup features at least once a week on the school menu and susu-bap is rice mixed with sorghum grain.

We usually end our meals on a sweet note, today's offering was apple sauce, which those of you coming from French influenced households are very familiar with. Usually after lunch, I have to take a power nap to recover from all the eating I've done as the portions are very generous and you can go for seconds.

Being able to eat at the cafeteria is definitely a great perk of my teaching job as I get to explore Korean cuisine in the comfort of my workplace. I would like to hear from you dear reader, have you eaten samyeopsal or any of the other foods featured here? How do Korean school cafeterias compare to the ones in your country? Leave a comment below!