"Is Korean food generally low in fat?"

 

Yes! In general, Korean dishes are low in fat. With that being said, one can certainly find individual items on Korean menus that may be relatively high in fat but the majority of recipes are low in fat, low in saturated fat, low in cholesterol, high in vitamins, high in fiber, most importantly high in flavor. Traditional cooking methods contribute to the Korean food's reputation of being low fat. Some of these methods include fresh salad-making, steaming, boiling, blanching, sauteing, stir-frying, dehydrating, barbecuing, braising, pickling, and certainly kimchi-making. Frying is also a part of Korean cooking but very few recipes require deep frying. Most fried Korean foods involve pan frying instead of deep frying, which requires much more oil and leaves more retained fat in the finished food. Vegetable oils were costly before the development of modern farming methods & mechanized efficient processing of oils, and therefore recipes were made to include fats sparingly. However, one does still need to consider the salt content of Korean food. Preservation of food for long-term in the lack of modern refrigeration had always been a challenge in many cultures in the past. All the cultures of the world have invented & employed various food preservation methods. Korean culture relied mostly on salting of food, as did the Japanese culture. They salted foods in the form of kimchi-making and pickling to preserve foods for cold and severe winter months when food became traditionally scarce. Kimchi-making is a very cleaver way to preserve foods as it utilizes the beneficial effect of fermentation. Fermentation prevent food spoilage by controlling and effectively utilizing naturally occurring microorganisms to do the work, making the food last longer, easier to digest, and most importantly giving intriguing flavor complexities. This same mechanism was utilized in other cultures as well in sake, wine, beer, cheese, and miso making for instance. Predominant pickling method in Korea traditionally has been simple salt pickling. This took several forms; salt pickling, say-sauce pickling, gochoojang (cayenne pepper paste) pickling, doenjang(soy bean paste) pickling, & less frequently salt-vinegar pickling (which is more common in western pickling). Interestingly, traditional Korean recipes rarely employed smoking as preservation methods as did many northern European cultures did. Modern Korean cooking has evolved to reduce its sodium content of the traditional recipes & are even healthier than the traditional recipes.