Korean Barbecue - First Try

When people think of Korean food, they often think of Korean Barbecue - aka Bulgogi. We usually pick up the pre-marinated meat at the Korean grocery but I decided to try making it myself to see how that went.

It was different than the store-made because there was a lot less marinade and it was only in the marinade for an hour so it had less time ito absorb the flavors. Ray said that he preferred it and I have to agree with him on that because it does have a better balance between the taste of the meat and the marinade.

Here's the recipe for the first attempt. I plan on trying other recipes to see what else I can come up with and with any luck will some day get to spy on Ray's mom as she cooks.

4t sugar
1 1/2 pounds boneless rib steak sliced into 1/8 inch thin slices (ask your butcher to slice it for you.)

Mix the beef and sugar together - I found it easiest to just sprinkle a little sugar on each slice as I worked through the pile of meat separating them. Let this rest for 2 minutes.

While the beef/sugar are resting, mix together:
1/4 c soy sauce
3 garlic cloves chopped fine
3 scallions cut into 1 inch pieces
1/4 t pepper
1t sesame oil

Add this mixture to the the meat and toss to integrate the flavors. Cover and let stand at room temperature for a minimum of 1 hour - or overnight in the refrigerator.
When you are ready to eat you can grill it or as we just just cook it in a cast iron skillet.






This is Ray helping cook the bulgogi.





Along with the bulgogi I made pan fried potatoes - for these you just peel potatoes and slice into 1/4 inch thick rounds. Put them in a pan with water to cover and cook for about 4 minutes. Strain.
In a separate bowl combine 1 c flour and 2 c water with some salt and pepper.
On a plate, put 1 c additional flour. Coat the potatoes with flour and let sit on the plate as you heat 1 1/2 T of vegetable oil until it just starts to smoke. Dredge the potatoes in the flour-water mixture and put into the hot oil. Fry 3 minutes and turn. Add oil if necessary and fry another 3 minutes.

I don't have the many additional dishes that you would normally get at a restaurant but served it with rice, lettuce, ssamjang, kimchi, the potatoes and a dipping sauce.

So after a day of running around and getting ready for our Superbowl party on Saturday, we still needed to find something quick and easy to eat. Fortunately I still had leftover beef broth that I had frozen when making ttok kuk so I decided to make Royal Meatball Soup - Wanjat'ang.

While the broth was thawing (and then eventually coming to a boil) you make seasoned meatballs. In a small bowl combine 1/2 T Sesame Oil, 1 T rice wine (ch'ongju), 2 green onions - white part only - minced, 1 clove garlic - minced, and a pinch of salt and pepper.




Mix this together with 5 oz or so of lean ground beef and roll into a whole bunch of small meatballs. (Fingers work best for all of this.) Beat 1 egg in one bowl and put 2 T flour in another bowl.By now hopefully your broth is at a boil - if not, wait until it is. Then quickly dredge the meatballs with the flour and then coat with the egg. Drop them one at at time into the boiling stock and boil for 5 minutes. Ladle into bowls and top with green onions - YUM!


Since my brother-in-law was over I made one other dish (that is kind of cheating because it's pretty much ready-made.) Zazang-myun!

So this is one of my favorite of all time - and comes as easy to make as Kraft Mac and Cheese - although you have to buy the noodles and sauce separately.
To make this you just boil these noodles for a while until they are done. (The package says how long - but like with any noodle I just keep tasting them until I'm happy.) While they are cooking away, you heat up the pre-packaged Zazang sauce - the brand we buy is Kim's.




Put the noodles in a bowl, add the sauce on top, throw in some green onions (if you have some thinly sliced cucumber, that is ideal to add) and enjoy!

Happy New Year!!

It seems appropriate to start this blog with the Korean New Year. Over the next year (or more) I hope to capture my experiences with Korean food - both through learning to cook it and through eating it both at home and at various restaurants in the Bay Area.

We decided to celebrate the Lunar New Year with the traditional Korean New Years dish - ttok kuk. This is a pretty simple dish that is basically a broth with rice noodles.

For the broth I did the following (double batch so I have leftovers to measure and freeze):

• Mince the white part of a handful of green onions and several cloves of garlic.
• Sautee in a few tablespoons of vegetable oil for about 2 minutes.
• Add a few soup bones and cook for about two minutes - browning each side. (it is helpful to soak the soup bones for an hour or more before doing this - the first time I made this I let them soak overnight and didn't have to skim anything off the top.)
• Add 4T Soy Sauce, 2T Rice Wine, 2T Sesame Oil and let cook for a few minutes.
• Add 12 C water and bring to a boil - skim the foam off of the top.
• Let simmer for 45 minutes or more and strain.

You soak the rice noodles before putting them in the soup. Mine were fresh so I only soaked them 10 minutes.

For the soup itself

• Take 8 cups of broth and bring to a boil.
• In a separate pan fry some minced garlic with vegetable oil.
• Add about 1/2 lb of meat of your choice thinly sliced (I just used ground beef for this batch) and cook until just done.
• Chop up some thin slices of green onion for garnish.
• Cut the rest of about 6 green onions in 1/4" slices and add to the broth after it's at a boil.
• Let the broth simmer for 10 minutes and then add the rice noodles.
• Cook the rice noodles for 10 minutes or until the right texture (soft but not too soft.) With fresh noodles, this will take less than 10 minutes.
• Ladle into soup bowls and top with the meat and green onions.

This recipe was more or less taken from: Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen: A Cookbook by Hi Sooshin Hepinstall.

In addition to the ttok kuk, we had another kind of ttok (my husband thinks paht ttok) which is similar to Japanese mochi - as you can see we couldn't wait to start eating them so there are a few missing...