Parallel FoodsKorean Flavor, Fluent in Your Pantry
Parallel Foods translates the foundations of Korean cooking into premium dry seasonings made for the American kitchen. Authentic flavor, without building a specialized pantry first.
Signature Blends
The Pantry
The one that started it all.
Sweet, savory, and deeply layered, Bulgogi captures the logic of a soy-and-sesame marinade in dry form. Expect caramelized richness, aromatic depth, and the unmistakable flavor of Korean barbecue.
For the ones who order off the regular menu.
Gochujang-forward with bold heat, fermented depth, and savory richness. Built for pork, but ready to bring its spicy, full-bodied character to vegetables, rice, noodles, and more.
It arrives sizzling. It leaves a mark.
Inspired by Chuncheon dakgalbi, this heat-forward blend is fully seasoned, not simply spicy. Curry warmth, savory complexity, and layered depth build a flavor that stays with you.
Cook With It
Recipes From Our Kitchen
Why is cooking Korean food so difficult?
It isn't the technique, it's the pantry. Korean cuisine is built on jang, the fermented foundations like doenjang, gochujang, and ganjang that create deep layers of salt, sweetness, heat, and umami. Balancing them takes time and practice, making dinner feel complicated before you even turn on the stove.
Western home cooks already understand dry seasonings. Parallel Foods bridges the divide by translating complex Korean flavor grammar into a format your kitchen already speaks: open, season, cook.
“We simplified the pantry so you can master the flavor.”
From the inside … as cooks.
NJ was born in Jeollabuk-do, a province in southwestern South Korea held in particular regard by the rest of the country as the keeper of its most authentic culinary traditions. This is a region where the old ways were preserved not out of stubbornness but out of reverence, where food is understood as lineage, and cooking is understood as a way of honoring the people who came before you. NJ didn't learn to cook from a recipe. He learned from a table that had been set the same way for generations. He came to America carrying that knowledge. What he couldn't carry was the pantry.
Matt trained at the Culinary Institute of America and went on to cook in serious restaurant kitchens in Boston and New Orleans, the kind of places where you either learn what flavor actually means or you don't last. He has spent his career since then as a professional food scientist, developing seasonings at the industrial level. When NJ brought him the theory, that Korean and Western culinary logic were running parallel to each other and no one had connected them. Matt didn't debate it. He went into the kitchen.
When he came back out, he had an answer.
Together, we are building a company that we hope changes the way Americans think about Korean food. Not from the outside, as observers. From the inside… as cooks.
This is where the Parallel begins.
Bring Korean flavor home tonight.
You do not need a shelf of unfamiliar ingredients to make food that tastes layered, intentional, and deeply Korean. Start with the format you already know—and discover the culinary tradition inside it.
Stock Your Korean Pantry