Bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish mixed with sauteed and seasoned vegetables, meat, and Korean chili paste over steaming rice. It can be served either cold or in a sizzling stone pot. The latter type is called "dolsot bibimbap." Toppings such as raw or fried egg and sesame oil can also be added.

Bibimbap is one of the most popular Korean dishes and quite well-known to many foreigners because of its unique combination of ingredients and spices. But it is also healthy, being rich in fiber and vitamins but low in cholesterol. Eating a bowl of bibimbap has come to be compared to taking multiple vitamins as the mixture of assorted vegetables and beef with steamed rice provides a wide range of nutritional sources at a time.

There are many regional variations of this dish as well as individual ways of preparing it. For example, for the most famous kind of bibimbap from Jeonju, the rice is specially prepared by steaming it in meat broth and then bean sprouts are added to the rice during the last steaming. Yukhoe, Korean-style raw beef, is also laid on top instead of the plain grilled minced beef served in ordinary restaurants.

There are many conjectures about how bibimbap came into being. Some say it originated in the royal court as one of the rice dishes served to the kings of the Chosun Dynasty. Others claim that the first type of bibimbap was invented after traditional rites or ceremonies in which various kinds of food are laid out symbolically to serve the ancestors, by mixing the leftovers together.

Another guess involves the busy season for farmers. Proponents of this theory believe that farmers who required a hearty meal for work during the harvest season but did not have time to cook complex meals so they simply came up with the idea to mix various ingredients together to get all kinds of nutrients into one bowl.