It's me, Perilla Oil

Origin

"Naya, deulgireum" ("It's me — perilla oil") is a line spoken by chef Choi Kang-rok on season 1 of the Netflix cooking competition Culinary Class Wars. In the second round's one-on-one black-versus-white duel he faced Seungwoo Appa with perilla oil as the assigned ingredient, and served braised radish finished in perilla oil with a perilla oil sauce, plus oysters simmered in the same oil. Explaining his intent, he said he used the oil "here and there, so that the whole time you're eating there's a little bit of — it's me, perilla oil." It compresses into one line the idea of an ingredient announcing its own presence throughout a dish.

Episodes 1–4 of season 1 landed on September 17, 2024, and the clip of the scene posted to Netflix Korea's official YouTube channel passed a million views within a day. Choi was already known for his distinctive way of speaking as the 2013 winner of MasterChef Korea 2 on Olive TV, so compilations of his lines spread almost immediately.

Spread

While the show sat near the top of Netflix's Korean rankings, the phrase left the broadcast. Quote compilations circulated through communities, and a book Choi had written earlier began selling again — one strand of a broader wave the show set off. Judge Anh Sung-jae's phrases, such as "evenly" and "degree of doneness," trended in the same window, making it a rare case of an entire cooking-show vocabulary crossing into everyday speech at once.

The speaker's own gloss came later. Appearing on Please Take Care of My Refrigerator in January 2025, Choi said the line came out of an attempt to describe the food simply — not a bid for a catchphrase, but an effort to compress an explanation.

How it's used

The template swaps the object: "It's me — X." Because the original meant an ingredient asserting its presence, it fits any moment of theatrically declaring one's identity or taste.