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Home cooking(집밥)is disappearing… No, it’s changing
The generation that grew up in the 1970s and 1980s remembers the time when the whole neighborhood was filled with the smell of cooking and frying in the evening. The ‘smell of cooking’ was a silent signal to children who were playing in the playground that it was time to go home.
Seo Jin-young (29), who lives alone, lives with a large cutting board placed on top of the induction stove. When she first became independent, she tried cooking various dishes out of a sense of liberation, but she realized that ‘buying food’ was much more economical than ‘cooking’, so she stopped. After work, when she was exhausted, it was not easy to manage ingredients, let alone cook.
“Even if you store it in the refrigerator, green onions dry out or fall apart in a few days. Shopping, preparing ingredients, storing, cleaning up, disposing of food waste, cleaning around the kitchen… When you cook, you feel that the housework increases by more than three times. If you are good at this or have the time and energy, home cooking is good, but if not, it is better in all aspects to solve it easily through a good side dish store.”
He said that he was making a pot of kimchi stew. Even if you always have kimchi, you need pork, anchovies for the broth, garlic, tofu, green onions, soy sauce, and sugar to make the basic taste of the stew. If you look at the lowest price of a large mart online mall to make kimchi stew (as of October 14th at Homeplus), you will see that the total cost is 15,800 won for 200g of pork for stew (3,180 won), 180g of anchovies for soup (3,990 won), a serving of peeled garlic (990 won), 300g of tofu (1,290 won), a serving of green onions (990 won), 500ml of soy sauce (3,480 won), and 400g of sugar (1,880 won).
Home-cooked meals, which were mothers’ sincerity, are changing in meaning and form due to changes in economic cost-effectiveness and labor value. View larger photo
Home-cooked meals, which were mothers’ sincerity, are changing in meaning and form due to changes in economic cost-effectiveness and labor value.
What about convenience foods?
A meal kit sold at a supermarket that includes raw meat, seasoning, garlic, and vegetables and can be made by simply adding water costs 9,900 won. Cooked retort kimchi stew can be purchased for 5,000 to 7,000 won per bag. Seo said, “I considered that food ingredients were expensive last month because of the Chuseok holiday, but I don’t know why they are still expensive now,” and “I can’t even think about cooking at home with the skyrocketing prices.”
Seo, who gave up cooking at home, only uses a microwave and air fryer instead of an induction stove to cook convenient meals. She said that with just these two items, she can make rice, ramen, various stews, and even crispy fried foods using commercially available convenient foods or processed foods, so she doesn’t feel like she is lacking in her diet.
MBC’s <Save Me! Homes>, which directly finds and shows real estate properties requested by viewers, featured several houses that had no gas stoves or heating devices in the sink or that didn’t have hoods installed to absorb the smells generated during cooking. Living spaces that have lost their cooking function and transformed into cafes are not an unfamiliar sight in recent interior trends.
The reality that home cooking is disappearing can also be felt through data. According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute's 2023 Food Consumption Behavior Survey, the response rate for "most of the food eaten at home is cooked at home" has gradually decreased from 89% in 2017 to 59% in 2023. In addition, rice consumption is also decreasing.
According to a survey by the Korea Rice Processing Food Association, the annual per capita consumption of "rice for cooking" has decreased by 20.8 percentage points from 71 kg in 2011 to 56.4 kg in 2023. Instead, the consumption of processed rice has increased by 8.8% to 620,000 tons, the highest rate ever.
Looking at the items where consumption has increased, the proportion of people eating rice in processed form, such as rice cakes including tteokbokki, lunch boxes, instant rice, and soy sauce, is gradually increasing.
The Korea Rice Processing Food Association reported, “Even among elderly households where the proportion of people who cooked and ate their own meals was high, that proportion is continuously decreasing,” and “As single-person households increase, the population is becoming increasingly older, and dual-income households increase, the proportion of ‘outsourcing food’ is expected to increase further.”
To Koreans, home cooking is not just a simple meal. It is a magical thing that fills not only the stomach but also the heart. Some call it the ‘source of happiness’, and others define it as the ‘reset button of the soul’ by adding a sacred expression. At this point, it seems that the memory of warm home cooking is engraved in the DNA of Koreans.
However, such home cooking is built on someone’s labor and sacrifice. According to a survey conducted by a matchmaking company (Only-U Vienna Rae) last year on 518 people hoping to remarry, men chose ‘omakase’ (27.0%) and women chose ‘home cooking’ (31.7%) as the expression that makes the other person’s favorability plummet during a remarriage matchmaking. Men felt burdened by expensive eating out, represented by omakase, while women expressed their burden over the overall housework implied by ‘home cooking’. Among the many conditions, ‘food’ acts as a barrier to remarriage.
Home cooking is also a word that represents women’s stereotypes of gender roles in the home. The expression ‘Mother’s cooking’ refers to warm and sincere home cooking, while also drawing out the mother’s devotion. In the past, the ‘definition of home cooking’ also had to meet quite strict conditions.
Professor Kim Kyung-ja of the Catholic University’s Department of Consumer Science said, “In the past, home cooking had to use fresh and good ingredients, and artificial seasonings or additives were not allowed,” and “More than anything, ‘sincerity’ was required to complete home cooking, so considerable effort and time had to be put into making the food.” “For example, no matter how delicious and healthy a food was, if it could be made quickly in a short period of time, it was not considered ‘home cooking that we miss.’”
For example, serving Spam with a fried egg as a side dish could not have been called home cooking in the past. To be considered ‘home cooking,’ you had to have at least three kinds of seasonal vegetables seasoned with various seasonings and a stew boiled with homemade soybean paste.
A home-cooked meal table set with the convenient ‘Tamchi Steak & Dakgalbi Set’ and the ‘Kongbiji Kimchi Rice Bowl Sauce Set’. Hyundai Green Food Greetings
A home-cooked meal table set with the convenient ‘Tamchi Steak & Dakgalbi Set’ and the ‘Kongbiji Kimchi Rice Bowl Sauce Set’. Hyundai Green Food Greetings
‘Home-cooked meal when you eat at home’… The meaning is also being rewritten
These days, cost-effectiveness and convenience are the greatest virtues in meals. A diet that minimizes time and cost, such as a ‘one-pan recipe’ that is hassle-free and reduces dishwashing, and a salad that makes a meal ‘without fire’, is preferred by people in their 20s and 30s. The definition of home-cooked meals has also changed. Any food can be at least classified as home-cooked meals ‘when you eat at home’.
A single-person household newsletter ‘Honsaem Letter’ and a research platform ‘Pickly’ conducted a survey on food consumption habits of single-person households in their 20s and 40s across the country and asked about the ‘definition of home-cooked meals’. Many respondents considered ‘processed foods such as canned ham, canned tuna, and instant rice (43.8%)’ to be home-cooked meals. There was also an opinion that ordering delivery food in an uncooked state and cooking it at home is home-cooked meals (1.7%). This idea was stronger among younger people.
Professor Kim analyzed, “The definition of home-cooked meals is changing because it is better to put at least a little effort into unpacking, heating, and putting processed foods in a bowl than to eat out where you don’t know what went into the cooking process and have a commercial mindset.”
This is why convenience food companies are recently focusing on developing and marketing foods that have a home-cooked or healthy feel. It is their intention to fill the gap in home-cooked meals that is disappearing with their own products. The size of the convenience and instant rice market is also growing. According to market research firm Nielsen IQ Korea, the size of the domestic instant rice market last year was estimated at 529.7 billion won. It increased by 23.8% compared to 2018 (KRW 427.9 billion) before the COVID-19 pandemic.
An official from Harim, which launched multigrain instant rice under the ‘Deomisik’ brand, said, “In line with customers’ demand for healthy rice, we are launching not only white rice but also brown rice, oat rice, black rice, and barley rice,” and “As the options expand, consumption is also increasing.”
Actor Ryu Soo-young is enjoying a second heyday as a home cooking evangelist who introduces practical home cooking recipes, not just his main job. His YouTube channel, which introduces more than 30 home cooking recipes that can be easily made using everyday ingredients, including ‘One-Pan Japchae’ that can be made in a single frying pan, has achieved over 100 million cumulative views.
He recently gave a lecture at Stanford University in the United States and said, “Good cooking is when both the cook and the eater are happy,” and “Home cooking should be easy and convenient for the cook and delicious for the eater.” A dish that requires excessive labor and sacrifice from the person making it is not a good home-cooked meal. The meaning of home-cooked meal is being rewritten.
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