A Food Narrative: How Noodles Helped Me Explore My Cultural Identity

Jjajangmyeon, or black bean noodles, have always been a family favorite: thick wheat noodles drenched in a sweet and sour sauce the color of rich soil, a deep, dark brown. Glazed onions and meats tucked away like hidden gems in the mess. As a matter of fact, my favorite baby photos are of me and my two brothers, dark chocolate-colored noodles spilled all over our fronts and faces, staining our soft, peach-like skin.

In elementary school, I probably ate the most jjajangmyeon I’ve eaten in my entire life. Sunday was my favorite day of the week because after church, my family, with my mom’s best friend, would go to one restaurant in our area’s Koreatown to fill our stomachs with warm jjajangmyeon noodles. As soon as we bound in through the door, the staff, a group of older Korean women wearing kitchen aprons, would greet us with affectionate smiles. They were like those aunts you haven’t seen in a really long time, fawning over how much you’ve grown. (pause) To this day, they remember us. In fact, I probably spent hours in that restaurant, my face buried in an enormous bowl, my hand constantly reaching for a napkin to rid myself of the brown sauce splatters that covered me like freckles. At the end, I always walked out with my stomach stuffed, regretting how much I’d eaten, but knowing I’d make the same mistake the following week.

Unfortunately, this period of mindlessly eating jjajangmyeon each week came to an end when my mom got a job at our church. My church day now ended at 2 PM, instead of 11 AM, which meant ordering Chipotle or McDonalds for lunch was a much easier option. Though I could no longer shove those delicious black bean noodles into my mouth each Sunday, my family never stopped eating them. “When we’re looking for takeout, jjajangmyeon is always an option,” my mom said.

My first jjajangmyeon outings with my family started out as sort of sensory exploration field trips in the suburbs of New Jersey where I grew up. When I was little, my parents took me to a restaurant with a giant glass window like a museum’s. On the other side, muscular chefs pulled noodles like webs between their fingertips and beat them against tables like drums. Another jjajangmyeon trip involved green jjajangmyeon noodles the color of cucumbers. With these trips, jjajangmyeon earned a permanent spot on our family menu.

Though they were my favorite noodles in the world, when I wasn’t eating them with my family, my love for jjajangmyeon made me feel ignorant and out of place. When my other Korean friends told me about their yearly summer trips to Korea, eating dishes I’d never even heard of, jjajangmyeon suddenly lost its charm. It felt ordinary compared to their grand, intricate dishes. Feeling like I lacked knowledge, I started to question my Koreanness.

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This year, the dish took on a new meaning for me as I began to explore my identity following the dramatic increase in hate crimes at the start of the pandemic. I’m a third-generation Korean American. I’ve lived my whole life in America, but my country still identifies me as “foreign.” For this reason, I’ve started to ask myself the dense, layered questions of, “What does it mean to be Korean American? How can I feel more connected to my Korean roots?” To answer these, I’ve absorbed large amounts of Korean culture. In recent years, I’ve listened to more K-POP than I’ve listened to in my entire life. I’ve watched countless Korean videos and dramas. I’ve also added hundreds of new Korean words to my vocabulary. Out of all of them, the food words are the hardest to learn. A lot of non-food words, like kuh, which means, “to be big,” have clear and easy to understand definitions, so they can quickly be added into your vocabulary (ex. Kigahkeudah means “They are tall”). But you can’t add food words into your head if you don’t know what they are. For example, when my friend said that she was having maratang for dinner, I had to ask her what it was. Even then, I couldn’t put words to taste. In times like these, food again made me feel disconnected from my Korean roots.

For my mom’s birthday this past month, I wanted to cook and as I was thinking about what to make her, my mind kept going back to jjajangmyeon. I decided to take up the challenge despite the little cooking experience I had.

Before I knew it, it was THE DAY. I was going to make jjajangmyeon for my family of 5, when... SURPRISE! My cousins were coming over! So were my eemos, my aunts, and my halmuni and harabuji, my grandparents. All of a sudden, I was cooking for 12 people, instead of 5. Thankfully, my aunts and my grandma offered to help with their usual loving smiles. Only my mom sat out. After all, we were celebrating her.

After we picked up our mish-mosh of ingredients, the marathon began. First, I reached for chunjang, a paste made up of fermented wheat flour and a pinch of soybean. The heart of the dish. You’d think it would be black beans, but they’re actually not used at all. Instead, chunjang gives the dish its rich color.

As I heaved a giant skillet to heat some smelly grapeseed oil with chunjang, onto the stove, my arms strained. Turning it on, I watched from the corner of my eye and grabbed my strips of pork belly, my knife struggling to cut through the swirls of fat. So I quickly switched over to cutting vegetables, letting my aunts take my place. When I admitted that I felt like I wasn’t contributing, they reassured me. “Don’t worry! We’re just helping with prep work. You’ll do the cooking!”

Soon, our island was a mosaic of colorful piles of yellow and green onions and chopped meat. Ready to begin, I dumped the pork into the skillet to fry it.

“Do we have minced ginger?” I asked my aunt, reading from the recipe.

“Umma, ginger piryohae?” she asked my grandma. Mom, do we need ginger?

I looked at my grandma on the side, boiling jjanjangmyeon noodles in a pot. In that moment, there was something beautiful about our kitchen, our family of generations working together in perfect harmony. There was me, cooking my very first dish, my aunts with a few years of experience, and my grandma, with a lifetime of experience.

“Yes, ginger will help balance the flavor,” my grandma coached with patient instruction.

I watched as she plopped some ginger into the meat, which had become crispy and golden brown. Then, I added in a few tablespoons of soy sauce and stir-fried the ensemble, gradually adding in the prepared vegetables. I followed this by pouring in a medley of sugar, oyster sauce, chicken bouillon powder, and chunjang. As I stirred, everything started to come together. Adding in a few cups of water, I let my concoction simmer. It was beginning to look like a stew. To finish it off, I added a water and cornstarch slurry to make it thicker. Then, putting everything together, I dressed a swirl of noodles with the sauce, leaving me with my favorite dish.

After I placed all 12 bowls of food around the table, my big family took their seats, the sweet smell of soy sauce and onions encasing us.

“Try the first bite,” my aunt encouraged.

I looked down at my bowl with its warm, inviting noodles arranged at the bottom. Carefully, I used my chopsticks, lifting a bite into my mouth.

Immediately, my body relaxed into the familiar experience. All of the textures intertwined, creating the perfect dish. Bite-sized pieces of meat dissolved in my mouth, dispersed throughout the chewy noodles. The sauce, meanwhile, was infused with flavor that was stolen from the soy sauce and the onions, which melted on my tongue, sweet like caramel. Eating jjajangmyeon was a scene I’d watched in K-dramas over and over, but as I sat here, with my eyes closed, I felt like I was finally living it. It was as if this single bite had momentarily transported me to Korea. In this second, I was struck by a powerful realization. I didn’t need to learn every specialized Korean dish out there to feel Korean. There were so many of them! Instead, jjajangmyeon, this dish I cherished, could be my gateway to Korea.

“How is it?” everyone asked, bringing me back to reality.

“Mashissuh! It’s yummy!” I responded and they all dug in.

That night, I felt closer to my culture than ever before. In the past, food had acted as a barrier, but now, making this dish had offered a direct connection to my country’s cuisine, more than that, my country itself. Comforted, I pulled out my Korean recipe book, the source of my new connection. Which recipe would I try out next? Maybe maratang?