A Hallyu of Korean cooking surges across India

When hooked onto K-dramas, you invariably get familiar with kimchi pancakes, jajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) and Korean barbeque. After spending a year watching dramas like Crash Landing On You, Hospital Playlist, Itaewon Class and Oh My Ghost to name a few began to yearn to taste the cuisine, a yearning which quickly spiralled into a need to learn how to cook these dishes — Kimbap and Korean pancake, jj apchae — NA home.

My hunt for Korean food began with the kimchi ramen and led to two things – one, restaurants serving authentic Korean cuisine, two, ingredients that make it possible to rustle up Korean noodles, ramen, pancake and kimchi.

Binge watchers of K-food shows like Pork Belly Rhapsody, Asian Street Food, Hanwoo Rhapsody,Reply 1988, Vincenzo, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, and Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Ju , you know what I mean. And you have probably, just like me, sat transfixed on your couch at midnight, enthralled by ramen-slurping scenes with a hunger for kimchi that Swiggy can not quench.

Which explains the surge of orders for Korean ingredients like Gochujang (the essential, alluringly sweet and spicy sauce; Daenjang (Korean soybean paste) and dried seaweed sheets.

In response to the admittedly niche, but rising demand, E-commerce platforms like Amazon (Urban Platter), Flipkart, and BigBasket have started selling ramen, toasted sesame oil, gochugaru chilly powder, and more. Specialised websites like Korikart.com, Korean food in India (on Instagram) and Seelamart sell Korean food products. Some sites also stock up on bone soup and other specialty ingredients.

An employee at Korikart, an online marketplace for Korean products, says they witnessed a surge in sales between March and December 2020, especially in their pantry section. This demand has led Korikart to sign up with offline stores in Darjeeling, Delhi, Nagaland, Manipur, Chennai and Bengaluru. Korikart was started in 2018 by Seo Youngdoo. **or

Rathi Jafer, director at the Inko Centre that was set up in Chennai in 2006 to extend a sustained intercultural dialogue, between India and South Korea, says she has noticed a slow but steady rise in interest in Korean food. “K-drama fans, who haven’t travelled to South Korea, parallelly track YouTube to understand various aspects of Korean food,” she says, adding, “During the lockdown we ran a virtual workshop on Korean cooking for Indian homes, along with Korea Tourism Organisation. Most of the queries and requests that came from participants were about the food they commonly see in dramas. Dishes like soups, j apchae, k imchi, b ibimbap...”

Korean food prepared by Keertida Phadke to go with a food trend story
| Photo Credit: Keertida Phadke

Mumbai-based plant-based chef Keertida Phadke’s love for Korean food began much before the global Hallyu craze. Keertida says, “The connection was instant because of the fiery kick. I grew up in Japan, so when I first tasted Korean food, I knew I had to learn how to make it. Now I make my own Kimchi, stew and pancakes. I rely on Amazon for the ingredients, but I always have a stock of g ochujang in my freezer, procured whenever I or anyone I know is travelling abroad.” Kimchi, Bindetoek, Bibimbap are some of her favourite dishes. WH

The Ministry of commerce and industry in India published online reports about an uptake in the consumption of K-noodles in India . The viewership of K-dramas and K-pop on Netflix reported a YoY EXPAND370% jump in 2020 and the import of Korean Noodles in India also witnessed a volume growth of 162% in 2020.

Sanjay Ramjhi, founder of The K-wave India (an open fan group), which is one of the largest offline Korean culture groups in South India agrees that there has been a sharp spike in viewership as a result of the pandemic and associated lockdowns. He adds “when I started the fan club in 2016, 98% of K-drama watchers were women. Men who watched and followed K-dramas was only 2%. The number has changed. Now 10% of k-drama fans are men, which a good jump.”

He adds that Korean food and ingredient sourcing is the most active discussion in the group. “Chennai has access to a lot of Korean food stores, as a large of number of Korean nationals work in the city… The interest in attempting to cook Korean food at home is also because almost all restaurants in Chennai have started including description of dishes explaining the ingredients on their menus,” he says.

Imports galore

Sneha Bohra of Ruchi International (food importers) who brings in Samyang Ramen to India gives a quantitative comparison when asked if there is an increase in demand for Ramen in India. She says, “Initially, we used to get one 20-feet container in two months. Now we get 10-11 containers measuring 40 feet every month.” They only import Samyang Ramen and sauces.

As home cooks gain confidence, helped by the many Korean food influencers and bloggers posting recipes on social media, the search for ingredients intensified. From starting with Ramen packets, people start hunting down Napa cabbage to make kimchi; sweet potato glass noodles to make japchae, (a savoury and slightly sweet stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables); Korean pancake mix (sprouted moong and rice batter), and kimchi sundubu jjigae (kimchi-tofu stew).

Chennai-based Sindhoo Dhana, an analyst with IBM started cooking Korean during the lockdown says “gochujang, fish sauce, rice sauce, sea weed, these are newer items on my shopping list. I follow recipes shared on Instagram by my friends or anyone. I love making the bibimbap, jjampong. The recipes are quite simple and is easy to make once the ingredients are in hand.”

Increasing curiosity

Popular South Korean noodle brand Nong Shim reported a sale of US$1 million (noodles) in 2020 – a 130% growth from 2019. The company is now eying India as an important market, focusing on products that cater to Indian consumers. Along with Nong Shim, another popular Korean noodle brand, Samyang is currently targeting Tier-1 and 2 Indian cities, inspired by rising customer awareness. Sneha elaborates, “There is an increasing demand in cities like Bhubaneswar, Indore and almost all states of the Northeast and Gujarat.”

Kimchi Ramen

Demand for newer flavours have given birth to businesses like Home Grown Produce and Masterchow.in. Rachna Rao, founder of Home Grown Produce, a Tamil Nadu-based food production unit, says they prepare the red chilli miso with gochugaru (Korean chilli) grown locally . She says her love for Asian flavours and the wish to make fresh suaces and dips made her start HGP. “The miso paste is perfect for k imchi. My online buyers use the paste on a lot of things and use it to make their k imchi.”

Masterchow, started by Vidur Katari and Siddhanth Madan in June 2020 in Delhi. Vidur says the demand is not just for ingredients to make Asian food with newer and more authentic flavours. Case in point, Korean food entice Indian palates because of our love for spice (hotness). Some of our best selling products that can be used to make Korean dishes are Kinky Korean (a spice sauce) and the black bean dip..”

Masterchow also does video recipes every Monday on their social media page and saw good participation for Korean dishes like [PLEASE COMPLETE]

Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh has over a dozen Korean cuisine restaurants, owing to the flow of Koreans, thanks to the presence of KIA Motors India’s manufacturing plant at Penukondan in Anantapur. Employed in an MNC in Hyderabad, Pallab Dey shops online for most of the common ingredients, but he doesn’t mind dashing off nearly 450 kilometres to Penukonda (in Anantapur district of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh) for premium products like Nori chips, potato pork dumplings or bibigo doenjang chigae.”