"Why don't Koreans use tomatoes in their cooking?" — what surprises the world about hansik [Food Cravings]

· How K-dramas have rapidly spread hansik around the world
· Fermented jang sauces and complex, balanced flavor
· A shared-eating culture, and other reasons for its appeal

There is one scene that shows up in every episode of a K-drama, without fail: actors happily eating. You watch, and you start to wonder what the food is. Then you want to eat it too.

You no longer need to be a Netflix subscriber to understand the sheer influence of K-dramas. That hansik has spread so quickly owes much to them. But this ever-intensifying hansik boom is only possible because the food itself is appealing.

The New York Times, in a feature on the popularity of Korean restaurants in New York City, wrote that "Korea has ended the decades-long reign of French haute cuisine."

Beyond "health," what has drawn foreigners so deeply into hansik is its "variety of flavors" and its "way of eating": the distinctive sauces of fermented jang, its complex-yet-balanced flavor, and its shared-eating culture.

First, the key to hansik's distinctive taste lies in its "sauces." On that point, the Spanish outlet 20minutos ran a piece worth noting, titled "Why don't Koreans use tomatoes in their cooking?" In the West, tomato sauce is used widely. Alongside it, dairy such as butter, cream, and cheese, as well as meat stocks, are the dominant sauces. That is why most Western dishes end up tasting broadly alike.

Korea, by contrast, is built on fermented jang — gochujang, ganjang, doenjang, ssamjang. As the Spanish outlet put it, "Korea has plenty of fermented sauces like gochujang and ganjang, so tomatoes aren't needed."

Jang carries complex flavor — sweet, spicy, salty, umami, sour — all at once. Used in cooking, it produces a wide palette of tastes. One analysis holds that Koreans eat as many vegetables as they do partly because they are cooked with jang. For foreigners, hansik's abundance of flavor is a genuinely new territory of gastronomy that they have not tasted before.

In that complexity, what matters most is "harmonious balance." A range of flavors has to balance one another for the meal to feel complete. Bibimbap is the classic example. A variety of ingredients are pulled together by gochujang, and finished with fragrant sesame oil to bring the flavors into balance.

Hansik also strikes balance across dishes eaten together. Kimchi-jjigae is joined by a plain rolled omelette (dalgyalmari) to cushion the spice, savory gim, and slightly bitter seasoned namul. Koreans are a people who take pairing — the combination of foods — seriously, and are naturally skilled at composing tastes into harmony.

Chef Choi Jung-yoon, chair of the non-profit Nanro Foundation, which works on the globalization of hansik, said, "The most distinctive feature of hansik is the aesthetic of harmony." She continued, "Many different dishes are laid on the table. Each has its own taste, but eaten together they achieve a striking balance." That "harmony" of hansik is precisely what foreign diners find so appealing.

Koreans' talent for pairing shows up in "anju" culture too — the food eaten with drink. When drinking, we pair the food most suited to the drink. Few countries have developed as varied a repertoire of anju as Korea. The U.S. outlet Tasting Table marveled, "There are separate lists of anju dishes for each drink — soju, makgeolli, beer — and the variety of Korean anju is incomparably greater than the West's."

This tendency shows up when Koreans eat foreign foods too. Whatever taste feels ever-so-slightly missing is topped up as a pairing. On pizza, we add bulgogi and buldak, and drizzle a rim of sweet-potato mousse around the crust to fill in the missing sweetness. On a hot dog, we add sugar, mustard, ketchup, cheese. On oily fried chicken, we glaze on a spicy-sweet sauce and set out tart pickled chicken radish (chicken-mu) alongside. A lightly bitter beer belongs on that table too. Reborn in a Korean idiom, these dishes are often exported back out again.

Another indispensable side of hansik's appeal is its "shared-eating culture" — the practice of sharing banchan, jjigae, jeongol, grilled meat. People spoon soup for one another, wrap ssam for one another.

Just as the Korean language distinctively favors "we" as its subject, Korea has a strong sense of community. That is why, even at meals, the act of sharing food matters.

The "Korean barbecue" that is sweeping the world hides that same aesthetic of sharing. Everyone gathers around a brazier at the center of the table. In the very act of grilling meat together, a mood of oneness takes shape. It is different from other countries, where already-grilled meat is served on individual plates.

Chef Choi added, "Sharing food and eating together can even influence how we perceive taste. The shared-eating culture also carries the value of seeking harmony between the community and the individual."