How to Read a Korean Menu Without Knowing the Words
Korean dish names are compounds: an ingredient, then a cooking method. Learn eight cooking-method words and you can decode most of a menu you have never seen.
Here is the thing nobody tells you early enough: you do not need to know a Korean dish to read its name.
Most names are built the same way — what is in it, then what was done to it. Learn the second half and you can work out an unfamiliar dish from the first half alone.
Eight cooking methods that cover most menus
These sit at the end of a dish name and tell you how it was cooked. This is the single highest-value list on the whole site for menu reading.
Find these words in the Gallery
- •볶음 — stir-fried. 제육볶음, 오징어볶음, 순대볶음
- •조림 — simmered in sauce. 고등어조림, 두부조림, 연근조림
- •찜 — steamed or braised. 갈비찜, 찜닭, 아구찜, 전복찜
- •구이 — grilled
- •무침 — seasoned and tossed
- •튀김 — deep fried
- •전 — pan-fried in batter. 해물파전, 빈대떡
- •죽 — porridge. 팥죽, 전복죽
Put it together
Now take a dish you have never seen and split it at the join.
고등어조림 — 고등어 is mackerel, 조림 is simmered in sauce. Braised mackerel.
깻잎장아찌 — 깻잎 is perilla leaf, 장아찌 is a pickle. Pickled perilla leaves.
치즈등갈비 — 치즈 is cheese, 등갈비 is back ribs. You can see where this is going.
Words that describe how it tastes
A second small group tells you what you are in for before you order.
매운 means spicy and appears in front of things. 양념 means seasoned, usually with a sweet-spicy sauce — 양념치킨 next to plain 후라이드치킨 is the classic pairing.
간장 is soy sauce, and it turns up as a flavour marker too, as in 간장게장.
Numbers and portions
The other half of a menu is prices and portions, and those are usually written in numerals, which makes them the easiest part of the page.
Portions are often marked 대, 중, 소 for large, medium and small. Two or three characters, and you can order the right amount.
A five-minute drill
This is worth doing once properly rather than reading about repeatedly.
Lock the words in with Card Match
- •Find a photo of a Korean menu online. Any restaurant, any city.
- •Pick five items and split each name at the join before translating anything.
- •Read the ending first, then the front. Guess what arrives at the table.
- •Check yourself. Getting three out of five is a good first score.
Why this beats memorising dish names
There are thousands of Korean dishes and you are never going to memorise them all. But the number of cooking methods is small and closed.
Learn the small closed set, and the enormous open set becomes mostly readable. That trade is available in Korean far more than in most languages, because the naming is so consistent.
It is also why food is such an efficient way into the language: the vocabulary you learn keeps paying off in words you have not met yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I only recognise the ending?
- That is still useful. Knowing it is 조림 tells you it arrives simmered in a savoury sauce, which is often enough to decide whether you want it.
Are these endings used outside restaurants?
- Yes, constantly — on packaging, in recipes, in cooking videos. They are ordinary words rather than menu jargon.
Which should I learn first?
- 볶음, 찜 and 조림. Between them they account for a large share of main dishes, and all three appear in the game word list.