5 reasons to eat savoury pancakes on a rainy day in Korea!
When the rainy season gets underway, jeon savoury pancake restaurants become popular. So I started wondering why do people eat savoury pancakes on a rainy day?
Any kind of jeon pancake will do. There are wheat flour pancakes with various fillings like leek (pa-jeon), kimchi, or seafood (haemul-jeon). The there’s bindaeduk pancakes made from ground mung beans (not wheat flour). (THE place to eat bindaeduk in Seoul is Kwangjang market.)
In Korean dramas too, I noticed that savoury pancakes always seemed to be the dish that the characters ate on rainy days. So I asked around and the same theories kept popping up.
So here are FIVE suggestions I’ve been given about WHY it’s got to be a pancake on a rainy day!
1. FRYING PANCAKES SOUND LIKE RAIN!
This was the theory that cropped up the most. The SOUND of the oil sizzling in the frying pan (and you need quite a lot of oil to make tasty pancakes) sounds like rain beating down on the rooftops.
I love the sound of rain. And the idea of sitting in a restaurant, with open walls and deep eaves, watching the rain splattering down on the ground outside sounds good too.
2. PANCAKES ARE GREAT FOR A SOCIAL OCCASION!
This theory goes back to when Korea was an agrarian society and farm work was reliant on the weather. Since work had to stop on rainy days, people took advantage of nature’s break time and gathered together for a social occasion, drinking alcohol and relaxing.
And since it wasn’t (and still isn’t) done to serve alcohol WITHOUT food, vegetable pancakes became the food of choice since they are easy and cheap to make and go well with alcohol.
(There’s even a specific word for food that is served as an accompaniment to alcohol = ANJU. (안주 按酒)
It wasn’t just farmers whose work stopped when it rained. One office worker in his 40s told me that when he was a child, his mum used to sell vegetables on an outdoor market stall in the countryside where they lived. But on a rainy day she’d take the day off and invite all her market stall holder friends back to her house where they’d enjoy cooking and eating pancakes together and drinking.
It always got boisterous and they’d have singing competitions and make him the judge! So now, when it rains he remembers back to those happy times as a child when his mum and her friends didn’t work and socialised at home instead!
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3. ACHES & PAINS NEED ALCOHOL!
Theory number 3 is that people get aches and pains in their bones and joints during rainy, damp weather – and so they want to drink alcohol. And as I mentioned earlier – you can’t drink alcohol without some kind of side dish.
Just for fun, here’s a quick quiz. Fill in the blank with the alcoholic beverage that (in Korea) is generally paired with the food:
- Chicken and ?
- Savoury Pancake and …
…makgeolli rice wine.
People used to make their own makgeolli at home – and some still do. Making alcohol at home conjures up memories of my dad making home brew which involved some eye-wateringly stinky cauldrons of boiling hops.
Makgeolli on the other hand is made with rice and yeast. I plan to go on a makgeolli making course one day. But in the meantime, I might try Maangchi’s recipe for home-brewed makgeolli!
4. WE YEARN FOR COMFORT FOOD!
Rainy days have a psychological effect on our bodies leading to the need for comfort food. And so people need to eat more carbohydrates on rainy days!
I think in Britain, (well for me anyway!) comfort food involves potatoes. Ideally a Sunday roast and rhubarb crumble (as long as I don’t have to cook it myself). A comfort food on a rainy lunchtime here for office workers is hot noodle soup. (kalguksu)
5. LIFE IMITATES ART
And here’s the last theory about why people eat savoury pancakes on a rainy day. It suggests that it’s actually dramas and films that help to continue this tradition!
Younger generations may not think about what to eat at certain times of the year, since this is no longer an agricultural society and office workers don’t need to worry about rain. And perhaps with so much apartment living, people are not so close to nature or affected by the weather anymore.
But characters in dramas and film over the years always eat savoury pancakes on a rainy day. And that way they remind the viewers about this custom.
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So whether they are simply an anju food accompaniment to alcohol, a physically or psychologically supportive comfort food, or a tradition continued by the media, I think we can safely say that lots of pancakes will be eaten again this coming changma rainy season. (July)
Related posts:
There are plenty of Korean songs about the rainy season. See my posts on Korean rainy day songs.
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