Machinery at E-Mart

Prepackaged and instant foods are a relatively recent phenomenon to the Korean housewife--she grew up with outdoor markets and roadside vendors, which are of course still around today. The popular E-Mart supermarket/department store chain is only 15 years old.

And in order to make inroads with the adjumma, they must combine modern efficiencies with a flavor of traditional market freshness. One aspect of this strategy is a number of processing machines found right inside the store. Below is the red ginsing extractor, for example:


Here is the rice milling machine:

Brown rice goes in ...	...milled white rice comes out

Here is a squid-prep apparatus. The lady is frying up raw squid in the George Foreman, then it will go through the roller device to be scored for easy shredding. Yumm!



Finally, two mahines that weren't operating today when I was wandering through. First is a garlic press:



Above is a seaweed, um, cooker, I guess. Sheets of seaweed go in one side, and then come out the other side a little darker. I suppose it's a sort of salamander. An adjumma feeds it at one end, and another stacks up the sheets that come out and slides them into packages.

There are in fact a few other devices like this in the store, preparing fresh processed foods, but they weren't out today, alas.