Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa. There are a lot of friends who like snacks. Korea is a heaven of snacks. There are many kinds, various and delicious. There’s an old snack that’s suddenly popular again. It’s yakgwa. Let’s find out what yakgwa is and what traditional Korean snacks are.
the origin of Korean sweets (Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa)
Korean sweets, traditional Korean sweets, are also called ‘Gwosuryu’. Process is a Chinese character word that means snacks. It also means that grains are mixed with honey. According to the records, the history of Hangwa has been around since the Three Kingdoms Period. However, the form of Korean sweets we see now was completed only during the Joseon Dynasty. Two-thirds of the royal feast food is divided into gojwa, raw and beverage. In the Joseon Dynasty, it became common not only in the court but also in the Yangban family to eat yumilgwa and Gangjeong, such as yakgwa and tea ceremony. During the Joseon Dynasty, confectionery grew into a food that accounted for half of the total food served at the banquet table, and even in private houses, it became popular as a representative food for weddings, rituals, and banquets.
Hangwa refers to old Korean snacks, so let’s find out what kinds of hangwa they have and still have them? I’m sure you’ve seen it or tried it before. It’s still common, there are many places to sell, especially in traditional markets.
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : Crunchy taste. Gangjeong
It’s a snack made mainly from grains and nuts. There are two types of Gangjeong. It’s taffy and gangjeong. The taffy-gangjeongryu literally hardens with a mixture of young water and nuts. Gangjeongryu is made by kneading glutinous rice flour and alcohol and steaming it. In Korea, Gangjeong comes in a “seasoned” state rather than “dipping sauce” like Hangu. Gangjeong itself has various ingredients, so depending on the ingredients used as a kind of junk, it is called black sesame gangjeong, sesame gangjeong, cinnamon gangjeong, and pine nut gangjeong.
Today, it belongs to confectionery, and it is actually handled, but Gangjeong takes a long time and is complicated to make, and the ingredients are only enormous according to the old era, so it has long reigned as the exclusive property of the yangban. The common people see Gangjeong only when the yangban is generous and distributes it or when the village is celebrated and makes a feast.
Of course, there were few cases like this, so Gangjeong was also the exclusive property of Yangban class and above. In addition, most of the above-mentioned generous yangban were distributed to servants and slaves under them, and it was rare for ordinary people to see Gangjeong except for working for yangban than those who met their owners could eat it during holidays or ancestral rites
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : a fruit of milk
It’s a snack that always goes on the feast table. Milk fruits are hot and humid in summer, so it is difficult to make them because the ground of Gangjeong is soft and the taffy is stretched, and they are made a lot in winter, especially before the Lunar New Year. There are various sizes and shapes, and there are many uses. It takes a lot of time to make dairy products. Soak the glutinous rice for about 15 days, put powder on it, steam it, beat it in a mortar for a long time, spread it thin, and cut it according to its purpose. You have to dry it so that the wind doesn’t flow, fry it in oil to inflate it well, and coat it with the clean old stuff. It’s not easy to make it at home because you have to make it through various steps like this. It has to be crispy and soft enough to melt in your mouth, but it’s not easy unless you’re skilled. It’s more crispy with bean water and alcohol. If you put in too much, it breaks easily, and if you put in less, it doesn’t swell when frying.
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : It’s a medicine that’s getting hot again
It tastes like yakgwa that’s chewy and sweet. It is a yamilgwa called yakgwa that is kneaded with honey and sesame oil and put into the yakgwa plate to be crushed or fried in oil. I dip it in grain syrup or honey and eat it when it hardens, and it has a sweet and savory taste. Yakgwa is a snack with a long history that started to be used as a sacrifice in Buddhism during the Unified Silla Period. The delicate flower-shaped yakgwa printed on the frame of making yakgwa is called the royal yakgwa, and the yakgwa made in a square shape the size of a bite is called the individual yakgwa. Chewy and sweet yakgwa are really delicious with ice cream. It’s a snack that was popular before. It’s better for your health than sugar because it has a sweet taste using honey. It’s very easy to get, so you should try it, too!
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : Roots and stems-Fertilization
Junggwa is a snack made by boiling roots or stems in honey or grain syrup for a long time. If you boil it down for a long time, it doesn’t get tough and becomes chewy. Fruits used in sweet and sour fruits such as citron, quince, hawthorn, apricot, etc. are good for fiber or hard and shelled, and root plants are lotus root, radish, carrot, ginseng, bellflower root, ginger, burdock, etc. They also make dried ogari with gourds or pumpkins. Fruits without fiber or with a lot of water are not good. Even strong and hard vegetables are blanched in boiling water once cooked, and the smell disappears. Sweet fruits should be cooked slowly for a long time with honey to make them look dark and clear. The lotus flower has a light red color and the bellflower flower has a yellow color. It looks very neat when you put a glass-like transparent fruit on a clean plate. When you cook gourd or ogari, if you put omija together, it turns red, and if you want to make it blue, add a little blue food coloring. If you cut the gourd into a leaf-shaped mold and put it in a flower-shaped lotus root or carrot fruit, it goes well with it!
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : “Dasik” that melts sweetly in your mouth
Grains such as rice, chestnuts, and beans are finely powdered, kneaded in honey or grain syrup, stuck in a tea tray, and removed to create a beautiful tea ceremony with letters, geometric patterns, and flower patterns engraved on the top. Tea ceremony was an indispensable item for ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, and large table setting during the Joseon Dynasty! Dasik was often used as a preparation, but black sesame tea made of black sesame was eaten by food poisoning, and acorn tea was eaten by coughing. Sanyak tea ceremony was called filial piety tea ceremony because it was good to give it to old parents for their weak energy. Dasik, which melts sweetly when you put it in your mouth and roll it gently, improves the taste of tea and is often used on tea tables or as dessert.
Korean traditional snacks – Hangwa : the boardroom department
We use fruits or fruits in the dorms. It is made by boiling or steaming fruits or fruits and boiling them in honey. The room department is divided into two categories: green and egg. Candles are cooked whole fruits or fruits and preserved in their original form and boiled in sugar. Eggs are boiled and crushed fruits and boiled in honey. And it is made in the shape of fruits or fruits. Since a long time ago, the lodging department has to be very laborious and have good fruit, so in the case of a late master’s house, they used to show off their skills by serving it as a guest table or a feast. I usually make two or three things and put them together. In most old food books, there are four types of lodging families: chestnut, jujube, yulan, and zoran.
Old Korean snacks are good for your health because they are usually sweetened with natural ingredients such as fruits, nuts, and roots and honey. In the past, the process of making it with precious ingredients such as honey and chopsal took a lot of time, so only aristocrats and aristocrats could eat it, but in modern society, it is easier to make and often buy it. In Korea, they sell a lot in traditional markets, and they use Chinese characters for traditional teahouses, important days, and ancestral rites. Chinese characters can be seen as Korean culture, right?
