History of Samgyeopsal, the Korean BBQ

Story of Samgyeopsal


 Samgyeopsal, the Korean barbeque has a quite short history compared to its overwhelming popularity around the world. Samgyeopsal is the high-fat part of pork belly with 3 layers of fat and lean meat. There are many stories about the origin of Samgyeopsal, but here is the most established theory.
 Koreans used to eat the pork belly part since Goguryeo dynasty, (BC 100 - AD 668) but they didn't grill it. Mostly, Koreans used to boil it. After World War 2, the consumption of pork has highly increased in Japan because of the hit of breaded pork cutlet and other dish using pork. Therefore, they started to look for the place to breed pigs outside of Japan since the pork-breeding causes a serious environmental problem; Korea. Japan needed parts such as sirloin and lean ribs and also needed to find the market to sell the leftovers like pork belly and fat; also Korea.
 Pork belly hit Korean food culture during the 1980s and after the economic crisis of Korea which they call IMF(stands for International Monetary Fund but in Korea, people refer it as an economic crisis itself) it became the representative dish because it was cheap.











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