Korean Temple Food — Sachal Eumsik and the Vegetarian Buddhist Table

Sachal eumsik (사찰음식, temple food) is the vegetarian cuisine of Korean Buddhist monasteries — a tradition that has been practiced continuously in Korean temples for over 1,400 years since Buddhism arrived on the Korean peninsula. The food embodies the Buddhist principle that all living beings deserve compassion, and that unnecessary killing — including the killing of animals for food — is to be avoided.

The Core Constraints

Like Japanese shojin ryori, Korean temple food prohibits:

• All meat, fish, and seafood
• Eggs
• The five pungent roots: garlic, onion, scallion, chive, and leek/Welsh onion

The five pungent roots are avoided because Buddhist teaching holds that they stimulate desire when raw and aggression when cooked — states incompatible with meditative practice.

The challenge: Korean cuisine is deeply dependent on garlic and scallion. Almost every savory Korean dish begins with garlic. Removing these aromatics while maintaining Korean flavor profiles requires fundamentally different techniques.

The Solutions

Doenjang without garlic: Temple doenjang jjigae omits garlic entirely. The fermented soybean paste itself carries enough complexity — glutamates, acids, bitter notes — that garlic becomes less essential. The mushrooms and vegetables in the broth contribute depth.

Perilla (kkaennip) as aromatic substitute: Perilla leaf (the broad, fragrant sesame leaf used in Korean ssam eating) provides a distinctly Korean aromatic note without the pungency of garlic. Temple cooks use perilla where other Korean cooking would use garlic.

Wild mountain vegetables (sannamul): Korean temple food's most distinctive ingredient category. Monks and nuns forage the mountain forests around monasteries for wild greens: fernbrake (gosari), bracken shoots, wild garlic mustard, doraaji (bellflower root), namul greens that don't grow in cultivated fields. These mountain vegetables have bitterness, earthiness, and mineral flavors that cultivated vegetables lack. The seasonality is strict — each wild green has a brief harvest window, and the temple kitchen organizes around what is currently available.

Kimchi without fish sauce: Standard baechu kimchi uses fish sauce (aekjeot) or salted fermented shrimp (saeujeot) for umami. Temple kimchi substitutes kombu powder, mushroom powder, or simply more doenjang for the umami element. The result is different — less fishy, more minerally — but functionally complete.

Mushroom-based stocks: Without anchovy dashi (the Korean counterpart to Japanese katsuobushi dashi), temple cooks develop stocks from dried shiitake, kombu, dried shiitake stems, and other dried fungi. The guanylate in shiitake provides umami depth.

Sannamul — Wild Mountain Vegetables

Sannamul (산나물, mountain herbs/vegetables) is the ingredient category most specific to Korean temple food. Key varieties:

Gosari (고사리, fernbrake/bracken): Dried and rehydrated. Earthy, slightly bitter, meaty texture. The most common temple vegetable.

Doraaji (도라지, bellflower root): White, crisp root with a distinctive bitterness. Shredded and seasoned with sesame oil.

Ssuk (쑥, mugwort): Intensely herbal, slightly bitter. Used in both cooked and fresh preparations.

Chwiduri (취나물, Korean aster): Wild aster greens — herbal, distinctive flavor unavailable in cultivated form.

The cooking of sannamul: blanch, squeeze dry, season with sesame oil, soy sauce (no garlic), sesame seeds. The absence of garlic lets the wild vegetables' own flavors come through more directly.

Jeong Kwan — The Global Ambassador

Jeong Kwan, a nun at Chunjinam hermitage within Chunghakdong Cheonghaksa Temple in South Jeolla Province, became internationally famous through a Netflix Chef's Table episode (2017) that profiled her cooking. Chefs including Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud have visited her hermitage.

Her cooking philosophy: fermentation as patience, seasonal alignment as respect, the absence of shortcuts as a form of practice. Her doenjang is fermented in traditional clay pots (onggi) for 3 years. Her kimchi is specific to the temple's mountain environment.

The international response demonstrated an appetite for Korean temple food as a standalone culinary tradition — not as a constraint-cooking exercise but as a coherent cuisine with its own logic.

---

Korean temple food is now served beyond monasteries at a growing number of restaurants in Seoul and Jeonju. The cuisine attracts both practitioners of Korean Buddhism and visitors interested in complex, ingredient-forward vegetarian cooking. What began as monastic dietary practice has become, partly through Jeong Kwan's visibility, one of Korea's most recognized contributions to global food culture.