Sweet potatoes, potatoes and kabocha squash are hardly new in Korea. They are old, familiar ingredients. But in autumn 2026, these everyday root crops are being repackaged as playful snacks and convenience-store meals aimed at younger shoppers.
On September 3, E-Mart24 announced five products built around sweet potato, potato and squash: a honey sweet-potato ice bar, chilled sweet-potato mattang, cheese-potato gimbap, a squash-and-egg sandwich, and sweet-potato gratin with fusilli. The company said it was responding to interest in “guhwang crops” among younger consumers. One retailer’s launch does not prove a nationwide craze, but it is a useful snapshot of how very familiar ingredients are being made new again.
Sweet potato has a particularly strong autumn-and-winter identity in Korea. It is commonly roasted or steamed, sometimes eaten with milk or kimchi. VISITKOREA also highlights sweet potatoes as an autumn food and notes treats such as goguma-mattang. In the past, sweet potatoes also served as a famine food that could replace rice when food was scarce; today they are just as likely to appear in desserts, drinks and grab-and-go snacks.
Goguma-mattang is an easy place to start. Bite-size pieces of sweet potato are fried or cooked until tender, then coated in a glossy syrup made with sugar, corn syrup or honey. The appeal is the contrast: crisp and sticky outside, soft inside. For a simple home version, cook the sweet potato, coat it lightly in caramelized sugar syrup, and finish with a little sesame seed.
The newer twist is temperature and format. Chilled mattang and sweet-potato ice bars turn a cold-weather flavor into something unexpected, while potatoes move into gimbap and squash into sandwiches. It is less a sudden revival of a forgotten food than a redesign of ingredients Koreans have eaten for generations.
If you are in Korea this autumn, convenience stores and bakeries are an easy place to spot the idea in real life. If you want to understand the classic first, the official VISITKOREA guide to goguma-mattang is linked below. ToYouPick will keep separating genuine food shifts from one-off marketing claims.