Chuseok Food: 7 Traditional Dishes, and Why More Now Come by Delivery

On Chuseok Day last year, delivery orders for songpyeon on Baemin ran 4.8 times higher than on the same day a week earlier. The half-moon rice cake that families traditionally shape together by hand is now also something you tap into a phone, according to figures from Baemin operator Woowa Brothers reported by The Korea Times.

That is the short answer to what Chuseok food is today: the same handful of dishes Koreans have put on the harvest-festival table for generations, now split between the family kitchen and the delivery rider. Below is each dish, what it is and where it sits on the table, then what the order data says about how the holiday is changing.

Chuseok food at a glance: 7 dishes and the delivery numbers

Chuseok, literally "autumn evening", falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month; its older name, Hangawi, means "the great middle" of autumn (Wikipedia). In 2026 it ran September 24-26. The table lines up the core dishes against Baemin's figures for Chuseok Day 2025, each against the same day one week earlier. Two dishes have no published figure, and the table says so.

Dish	What it is	Place at Chuseok	Baemin orders, Chuseok Day 2025
Songpyeon	Half-moon rice cakes steamed on pine needles	On the ancestral rites table with the new rice	×4.8
Jeon (modumjeon)	Fish, meat or vegetables in flour and egg, pan-fried	Rites-table fritters, called gannap	+270%
Namul	Seasoned vegetables	The vegetable side of the table	+135%
Yakgwa / hangwa	Honey cookies and traditional confections	The sweets	+44%
Galbijjim	Braised beef short ribs	Traditional Chuseok centrepiece, the priciest cut	+39%
Japchae	Glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables	Party dish for every big gathering	No figure published
Toranguk	Taro soup in beef broth	The holiday soup	No figure published

Read down the last column and a pattern shows. The biggest jumps belong to the dishes that take the most handwork: songpyeon is shaped one piece at a time, and every piece of jeon is floured, dipped in egg and fried. Galbijjim, the most expensive dish on the list, moved least.

What each Chuseok dish is

1. Songpyeon

The dough is rice flour worked with salt and hot water until smooth, filled with sweetened sesame seeds, red bean, chestnuts, jujubes or honey, then steamed over pine needles for 20 to 30 minutes (Wikipedia). The needles add fragrance and keep the cakes from sticking. The shape carries the meaning: a full moon can only wane, a half moon can still fill up. An old saying promises a good spouse or a beautiful baby to whoever shapes pretty songpyeon, which is how the shaping became a family job.

2. Jeon

Jeon is a fritter: seasoned fish, meat or vegetables coated in wheat flour and egg wash, then pan-fried (Wikipedia). The jeon made for ancestral rites has its own name, gannap. Chef Kim Geon of Goryori Ken describes the cod version to the Michelin Guide: fillets in flour, then beaten egg, then fried until lightly golden. Modumjeon, the item in the Baemin data, is simply an assorted platter. Jeon is everyday banchan too; at Chuseok it is made in bulk.

3. Namul

Namul covers greens and vegetables served raw, blanched, sautéed or dried, seasoned with some mix of salt, vinegar, sesame or perilla oil, soy sauce and doenjang (Wikipedia). On a Chuseok table it is the counterweight to all the frying. Leftovers go where leftover namul always goes: into a bowl with rice, which is how bibimbap gets made at home.

4. Galbijjim

Short ribs are scored so the seasoning gets in, simmered with soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions, garlic, ginger juice and sugar, and finished with jujubes, ginkgo nuts, chestnuts, pine nuts and shiitake (Wikipedia). It was traditionally eaten at Chuseok and counted as a high-class dish because the centre rib cut costs more than other beef in Korea. Grilled galbi from a Korean BBQ table is the same cut, but over fire instead of a slow braise.

5. Japchae

Glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables and dressed with soy and sesame oil. It turns up at weddings, holidays and milestone birthdays, and it suits a holiday for a practical reason: it is fine warm, at room temperature or the next day. Our japchae recipe walks through the method.

6. Toranguk

Taro soup. Chef Kim Geon calls it "a representative food for Chuseok" in the Michelin Guide feature: taro in a rich beef broth, topped with perilla seeds. Of the seven, it is the one you rarely meet outside the holiday.

7. Yakgwa and hangwa

Hangwa is the umbrella word for traditional Korean confections, often coloured with natural ingredients and pressed with patterns (Wikipedia), like the tea cookies in the photo above. Yakgwa is the best known: a deep-fried wheat cookie made with honey, rice wine, sesame oil, cinnamon and ginger juice, as Chef Koo Kwok Fai of Yu Yuan describes it to the Michelin Guide.

Why the Chuseok table is moving to delivery apps

The ancestral table has a set layout: rice and soup to the north, fruit and vegetables to the south, meat to the west and in the middle, rice cakes and drinks to the east (Wikipedia). The Baemin numbers show which parts of it families now hand off.

• The morning rush. About 40% of all Baemin orders on Chuseok Day came in between 8 and 11 a.m., "as families prepared for morning ancestral rites or early lunches," the Korea Times report says.
• New shops. 67% of completed orders that day went to a restaurant the customer had never ordered from before, up from 49% the week earlier.
• Not everyone eats traditionally. On Yogiyo, a rival app, ice cream orders rose 90.1% and café lattes 82.6% on last year's Chuseok, with pizza up 21.8% (The Korea Times).

Baemin expects more of the same. "With this year's Chuseok holiday being relatively short compared to last year, the movement of consumers resolving holiday meals through the app or trying out new stores will become even more active," a company official told the paper. The 2026 numbers are not out yet; every figure here is last year's.

Daniel's Bite

Read the table the other way round and it is a list of what Koreans find hardest to make at home. The data doesn't say the holiday is fading. It says families keep the dishes and drop the hours: order the jeon platter nobody wants to stand over, keep the galbijjim, where the money and the pride go. If you are cooking Chuseok abroad, copy that split. Make galbijjim or japchae, which scale well and hold for a day, and buy the rice cakes and fritters from a Korean market if you have one. The one thing worth doing by hand is a small batch of songpyeon, however lopsided. Shaping them together is the tradition. Nobody is grading them.

Chuseok FAQ

What is the most traditional Chuseok food?

Songpyeon. It goes on the ancestral rites table alongside newly harvested rice, and it is the dish most closely tied to the holiday.

What is songpyeon made of?

Rice flour dough made with salt and hot water, filled with sweetened sesame seeds, red bean, chestnuts, jujubes or honey, and steamed over pine needles for 20-30 minutes.

What is jeon and why is it made for Chuseok?

Jeon is fish, meat or vegetables coated in flour and egg and pan-fried. It is part of the ancestral rites table, where it is called gannap, so families fry it in bulk for the holiday.

Do Koreans still cook everything at home for Chuseok?

Less than they did. On Chuseok Day 2025, Baemin orders for songpyeon rose 4.8 times and assorted jeon 270% against the week before, and about 40% of that day's orders came in between 8 and 11 a.m.

What is the difference between galbi and galbijjim?

Same cut, beef short rib. Galbi is marinated and grilled; galbijjim is braised slowly with soy sauce, garlic and ginger, then finished with chestnuts, jujubes and mushrooms.

When is Chuseok in 2027?

September 14-16, 2027. In 2028 it falls on October 2-4 (PublicHolidays.co.kr). For Korean food to try before then, the street food guide and the K-drama food guide are good places to start.