Gimbap (Seaweed Rice Rolls)

Laver (gim) has a long history in Korea. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that Joseon geographies list it as a product of the southern and eastern coasts, that it was good enough to be traded abroad, and that on the first full moon of the lunar year people wrapped rice in laver or leaves as boksam, "wrapping good fortune." A 1936 cookbook describes gimssam: laver brushed with oil, salted and toasted, then used to wrap rice.

Gimbap in today's sense — rice spread on a sheet of laver, filled and rolled — is, in the encyclopedia's account, a localized form of Japanese norimaki introduced during the colonial period. A 1925 newspaper item already mentions "Japanese gimbap," and a 1930 recipe insisted on thick Japanese laver because Korean sheets were too thin to roll. By 1939, however, a newspaper column by the cookbook author Hong Seon-pyo recommended rolls of Korean laver filled with rice, soy-braised beef and kimchi for lunchboxes, and a 1946 home-cooking text dropped the sweetened vinegar of sushi rice altogether. Rice seasoned with sesame oil and salt rather than vinegar remains the clearest difference from Japanese rolls.

The fillings changed with the times. The encyclopedia dates the first gimbap with yellow pickled radish (danmuji) to a 1958 newspaper article and the first with ham to the same year; in later decades processed ham made for gimbap and soy-braised burdock replaced older fillings such as dyed fish floss and braised gourd strips. The Korean Food Promotion Institute places the rise of the long rolled form in the 1960s and 1970s, when it became the indispensable food for school excursions, and gimbap specialty shops and franchises spread in the 1990s.

Gimbap is a portable assembly of familiar side dishes: spinach dressed like sigeumchi-namul, a thin rolled omelet in the manner of gyeran-mari, braised fish cake like eomuk-bokkeum and sometimes ueong-jorim. See also dosirak.

• A portable mixed meal: one roll combines grain, egg, fish cake and vegetables, which the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes as a fast food with a fairly even spread of nutrients.
• Laver and greens: spinach and laver contribute vitamin A (as beta-carotene) and vitamin K; seaweeds such as laver also contain iodine. See seaweed and iodine.
• Easy to adjust: more vegetables (cucumber, perilla leaves, burdock) and less processed meat or fish cake makes a lighter roll.

• Chungmu gimbap (Tongyeong): small fingers of plain rice in laver with no filling, served with spicy squid and radish kimchi on the side. The Korean Food Promotion Institute relates that the fillings were kept separate because rolled gimbap spoiled quickly in the heat of the port town, and that the dish became nationally famous after a vendor sold it at the 1981 Gukpung festival in Seoul.
• Classic or vegetable gimbap: spinach, carrot, egg, pickled radish, fish cake or ham and burdock — the standard home and snack-shop roll.
• Kkoma (mini) gimbap: rolled on a half or quarter sheet of laver with just a few fillings.
• Specialty rolls: shops sell kimchi, beef, tuna, cheese and pork-cutlet gimbap, and "nude" gimbap with the rice on the outside; convenience stores sell triangle gimbap.