South Korea

South Korea's grocery market runs on large-format chains: E-mart, Coupang Fresh and Homeplus between them cover most of the country's day-to-day shopping, all priced in KRW. Physical hypermarkets sit alongside a genuinely huge quick-commerce layer — next-day and even same-day grocery delivery is normal here, not a premium add-on, which keeps price competition unusually visible to shoppers.

Fresh produce and banchan (side dishes) are still frequently bought at neighborhood markets rather than chains, but packaged goods, meat, and imported items are where the supermarkets listed here compete hardest. Imported specialty ingredients — hard cheeses, cured pork, olive oil — carry a real premium versus domestic staples like rice, tofu, and pork belly, which is why dishes built around imported dairy or cured meats tend to cost noticeably more here than their country of origin.

On the utility side, this site charges 130 KRW per kWh of electricity and 90 KRW per kWh-equivalent of gas for every recipe cooked in a Korean kitchen — city gas (도시가스) is the default for stovetop cooking in most apartments, and it's cheap relative to electricity, so boiling and simmering dishes carry a lighter utility tax than frying or baking.

Below, every dish on CostMyMeal is priced against these three chains so you can see exactly where a recipe gets expensive — and where Korea's cheap staples make it one of the more budget-friendly places on this site to cook from scratch.