Over the years mukbang videos have become my ambient background viewing of choice. I watch them while I work, clean, or complete an idle task around the house. For me, watching other people enjoy a meal provides quiet comfort and a strange sense of satisfactionâespecially during a couple of years of dining almost exclusively in my own home.
Mukbang is a Korean portmanteau meaning âeating broadcast.â The trend, in which strangers on the internet consume (often obscene amounts of) food while talking to a camera, started in South Korea. But it has become so popular worldwide that the word was recently added
Watching all of these videos meant it didnât take long to notice a trendamong
At first I theorized that the wooden spoons were meant to prevent the sound of metal scraping against stainless-steel bowls and ceramic dishware. (Mukbang videos are also popular for their ASMR effects, which means many mukbangers use highly sensitive mics.) But Korean American food and lifestyle vlogger Rachel Kim
âWooden spoons just make food taste better,â Kim tells me in a Zoom interview from Philadelphia. âWhen I eat with a metal spoon, it feels cold and food can taste metallic. Wooden spoons feel more homey.â
Kimâs 40,000 YouTube subscribers tune in to see what she typically eats in a week as a med student. And when eating at home, her utensil of choice for digging into soups, stews, and rice bowls is usually a wooden spoon. She loves how they look on camera too: âViewers often comment that wooden spoons look so calming,â she says. She also notes that wooden spoons tend to have longer handles, which also allow diners to reach deeper into their soup bowls and into any of several dishes sprawled across the table.
Soups and stews are a major part of the Korean culinary repertoire. See: guktangjjigaebubbling, scalding hot gloryhistorically usedspoon class theory
