I recently returned home from a month in Asia and while I sampled a lot of different food - both familiar and foreign to me - one of my favourite experiences was actually on my Korean Air flight.

Having said that, I will admit this: I love airplane food. The food service alone is a nice break from in-flight boredom. And the anticipation of finding out what's in the hot little package in front of me makes each flight worth while.

On my flight to Korea, I decided to start immersing myself in the culture and ordered the Korean entrée, Bibimbap - which I've had many times in Toronto so admittedly it wasn't that adventurous a move. If you've never had it, Bibimbap is a popular Korean dish of white rice topped with sautéed, julienned vegetables like cucumber, zucchini, mushrooms, spinach and soybean sprouts, usually with sliced beef but tofu or chicken are also common. Often, a raw or fried egg is added to the top.

The cutest part about my meal (which was sans egg) was the instruction sheet that came with it. I suspect it was given to me because I'm not Korean (the instructions are also in Chinese and Japanese) and although the steps were pretty straight forward, I wouldn't have been sure what to do with the sesame oil and definitely benefitted from the "spicy levels" outlined for the hot pepper paste.

The steps featured on the left are:

1. Please put the steamed rice into the "Bibimbap" bowl.
2. Add hot pepper paste. [ed note: this came in a cute little toothpaste-like tube]
   Spicy level 1 (Mild): 1/2 of tube
   Spicy level 2 (hot): Full tube
3. Add sesame oil
4. Mix the "Bibimbap" together
5. Enjoy the "Bibimbap" with side dish and soup.

Make it at home: check out adorable video blogger Maangchi's recipe for Bibimbap.

And tell us, what has been your favourite airplane culinary experience?