Chuseok Food: What Koreans Eat at Thanksgiving
Chuseok is Korea's biggest holiday — a three-day harvest festival centred around family, ancestral rites, and an extraordinary amount of food. Here is what goes on the table and why it matters.
What Is Chuseok?
Chuseok falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar — usually September or October. It is Korea's equivalent of Thanksgiving, a three-day national holiday when the entire country returns to their hometowns to visit family, pay respects to ancestors, and eat. The motorways become gridlocked, train tickets sell out weeks in advance, and households spend days preparing elaborate feasts. Food is central to Chuseok in a way that goes beyond celebration — certain dishes are prepared specifically as offerings for ancestral rites (charye) before the family sits down to eat.
Songpyeon: The Quintessential Chuseok Food
Songpyeon are small, half-moon-shaped rice cakes filled with sesame seeds, sweet red bean, or chestnut paste, then steamed on a bed of pine needles. The pine needles impart a subtle fragrance and prevent the rice cakes from sticking. Making songpyeon is a family affair — everyone sits around the table shaping the dough and stuffing the fillings. There is a Korean saying that whoever makes the prettiest songpyeon will find a beautiful spouse. The dough is made from glutinous rice flour and can be coloured naturally with mugwort (green), pumpkin (yellow), or black sesame (grey).
The Charye Table
The ancestral rite table (charye-sang) follows strict traditional rules about placement and composition. It typically includes freshly harvested rice, songpyeon, various jeon (savoury pancakes), namul (seasoned vegetables), grilled fish, meat, and fruit. The arrangement follows the principle of "east red, west white" (dong hong seo baek) — red fruits are placed on the east side of the table, white fruits on the west. Each family has its own traditions around the charye table, passed down through generations.
Jeon (Savoury Pancakes)
Chuseok is jeon season. These are savoury pancakes made from various ingredients — sliced courgette, spring onion, minced meat, fish, tofu — dipped in egg batter and pan-fried until golden. The most common Chuseok jeon include hobak-jeon (courgette pancakes), dongtae-jeon (pollack pancakes), and yukjeon (beef pancakes). Making jeon is one of the most labour-intensive parts of Chuseok preparation, and Korean mothers and grandmothers have traditionally spent days frying batch after batch. The aroma of frying jeon is deeply associated with the holiday.
Japchae
Japchae — glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables, meat, and seasoned with soy sauce and sesame oil — is another Chuseok staple. It requires each ingredient (spinach, carrot, mushroom, pepper, beef) to be cooked separately and then combined, which makes it time-consuming but results in a dish where every element retains its individual character. Japchae is served at room temperature and keeps well, making it practical for a holiday where food needs to last.
The Modern Chuseok
While traditional Chuseok foods remain central, modern Korean families increasingly supplement the spread with contemporary dishes. Gift sets of beef, fruit, or premium food products are exchanged between families. Some younger Koreans order pre-made Chuseok food sets from department stores rather than cooking everything from scratch. But the core traditions — songpyeon, jeon, the charye table — endure. Chuseok is ultimately about continuity: connecting with ancestors, family, and the rhythms of the harvest season through food.
Celebrating in the UK
If you want to mark Chuseok in the UK, making songpyeon is the most meaningful project. Glutinous rice flour is available from Asian supermarkets, and the fillings can be improvised from available ingredients (sesame seeds and brown sugar work well). Jeon are straightforward to make with UK vegetables. HMart stocks songpyeon mixes and frozen songpyeon around the holiday season. Chuseok 2026 falls on October 5th — mark your calendar.