Walk into a Korean home kitchen during Chuseok or the Lunar New Year, and you’re likely to find three vegetable dishes laid out side by side — a brown tangle of braised fernbrake, a bright green mound of sesame-dressed spinach, and something pale and fibrous, either lightly gleaming in sesame oil or boldly tinted red with chili. That last dish is doraji namul, made from Korean bellflower root, and it represents one of the oldest, most culturally layered vegetables in the Korean pantry.

If you’ve ever sat down to a Korean holiday spread and spotted a glossy tangle of dark, chewy braised greens sitting quietly among the banchan, there’s a good chance you were looking at gosari namul — and probably underestimating it. Gosari (고사리), known in English as fernbrake or bracken fern shoots, is one of the most deeply rooted ingredients in Korean home cooking: earthy, satisfying, and deceptively simple to prepare once you understand a few key techniques. This guide covers everything you need to cook authentic Korean fernbrake — from sourcing dried gosari to understanding why it belongs in your bibimbap, and why Korean grandmothers have been keeping it in their pantries for generations.

There are dishes that define a cuisine’s confidence — its willingness to let a single, exceptional ingredient speak for itself. In Korea, yukhoe (육회) is exactly that dish. Made from finely sliced raw beef seasoned with sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, and sugar, then crowned with a golden egg yolk and fanned with thin sheets of Korean pear, yukhoe is one of the most quietly stunning preparations in Korean cuisine. Yet for many visitors, the words "raw beef" are enough to give pause. This guide is here to change that. Whether you’re curious about the tradition behind this Korean raw beef dish, wondering how it compares to steak tartare, or simply trying to figure out whether it’s safe to eat, you’ll find everything you need right here.