South Korea

Korea is a fermentation nation, where kimchi, gochujang, and doenjang anchor nearly every meal, and the table fills with shared banchan side dishes. Sizzling barbecue, bubbling stews, and rice-based comfort foods make eating a lively, communal affair.

Kimjang, the late-autumn making and sharing of a winter's worth of kimchi, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2013. Households pool labour and cabbages over a few days and the results are distributed among neighbours and relatives, which makes it a social obligation as much as a preserving method.

The jang, the fermented soybean sauces at the base of nearly every pot, got their own UNESCO inscription in 2024, with families keeping soy sauce aged for decades so a household's cooking tastes the same across generations. Chilli, and so gochujang, only reached Korea in the late sixteenth or seventeenth century, which makes the red half of that pantry the newer half.

A silky, naturally sweet Korean pumpkin porridge thickened with glutinous rice.