Street Food

You know how you are also warned about eating street food in another country.  I have heard lots of horror stories about eating something from a street vendor, and paying for it for weeks afterwards.  Luckily, South Korea is not like that!  You can eat all the delicious street food you want with the only side effect is gaining lots of weight.  Most of the food you can buy on the street in South Korea is either deep fried, boiled, or cooked right in front of you anyways.

It is good that you can eat the street food here, because sometime when you pass by a stand the smell is sooooo good.  I especially love these little doughnut-hole sized balls filled with something that tastes like chestnuts.  You get 18 for $2.  Some of the street food only comes out for the winter times.  These are usually freshly cooked, sweet, and very bad for you.  There is a pancake type food that is simply dough wrapped around sugar that is cooked until all the sugar melts in the middle.  The epitome of the bad for you, delicious winter street food are these fish things.  They aren't really make of fish, they are just shaped like a fish.  They have special fish-shaped waffle irons  to cook them in, and they are almost fried rather than cooked.  The middle is filled with the sweet red bean paste, or you can get the ones filled with some sort of custard.  You can either get 3 for $1 or 7 for $2. 
Some of these street food stands are always in one place, but others move a lot.  When we walk down our street we sometimes pass people selling oranges, cookies, and the sweet dough-balls, but at other times there is nothing. 

Around the corner from our home there is a permanent street food stand.  Someone drove their truck to that spot and never left.  I think the wheels are even flat.  We have yet to buy anything, though, because this one sells the dish dok-bok-i.  This dish consists of vegetables, fish cake, and something like rice pasta cooked up in a red, spicy sauce.  It is really tasty, but you know something is spicy when your Korean friends have to run for water after eating it.  Some are spicier than others, I'm just afraid to try a random stand in case my mouth and stomach would not be able to handle it.  She also sells boiled fish cakes, a type of sausage dish, and various hard to identify fried items.  Though someday we will be adventurous, we usually just go up the block and get 3 red bean fishes for $1.