The Bulgogi & Kalbi Topic

[melonpan]

Melonpan, was this like a nabe-type thing you made? Besides marinating the beef, what did you add to the pot, some kind of broth or soup base with water?

nope! nothing added.

start by dragging 1/4 pound of marinated beef into the middle. there will naturally be some marinade dripping, but we make a weak effort at shaking most of the marinade off before placing on the plate.

next, i placed the mushrooms around the meat. the mushrooms were cleaned carefully with slightly dampened paper towels (for the pine mushrooms) or rinsed gently and shaken dry (the rest). they were not marinated and there was no other treatment. they went into the pan raw.

we also did not place any extra oil or broth into the pot. the mushrooms themselves give off plenty of water and bulgogi always gives off a bit too. :D

the end result is quite moist with lots of bulgogi "broth" without having to add anything.

you should try this! esp if you like bulgogi.

[melonpan]

here is a <a href="http://www.rawbw.com/~coconut/eg/04/041126bulgogi5L.jpg">link to a larger photo</a> of the finished bulgogi, and you can clearly see how much bulgogi gukmul (broth) there is!

it is the same photo as above, just larger.

also, although this is overkill, here is a <a href="http://www.rawbw.com/~coconut/eg/04/041126bulgogi4L.jpg">larger photo of the raw pot</a>. :D

Edited November 27, 2004 by melonpan (log)

[Jason Perlow]

Very pretty. Will have to get ahold of some decent Asian mushrooms soon and try it.

I'm wondering if some firm tofu or japchae noodles would go good with this too.

[melonpan]

Very pretty. Will have to get ahold of some decent Asian mushrooms soon and try it.

I'm wondering if some firm tofu or japchae noodles would go good with this too.

oh yes, we did an encore tonight with the bulgogi and mushrooms we did not cook last night. we added japchae noodles.

these are called dangmyeon and they are usually made from sweet potato flour. i think they are sometimes made from other kinds of starch. anyway, you have to soak them in warm water for a little bit. i am sure you already knew that but just in case someone else doesnt know.

perhaps you were korean in one of your previous lives?

[Jason Perlow]

perhaps you were korean in one of your previous lives?

This is what my adopted halmeoni and my Korean friends often ask me.

[Jason Perlow]

A more traditional Bulgogi prep tonight:

Bulgogi with Cucumber Kimchi, Jap Chae Noodles, Mungbean Pancakes and Chicken Rice.

Sorry for the out of focus photo...

[Jaymes]

To me, it's best by far when cooked over some sort of flame.

Depending on where I happen to be living, and what sort of 'flame' I've got handiest access to, my 'stand by' method is to take a flank steak, score it pretty heavily on both sides, slice it across the grain into strips about 3/4" wide, marinate it for several hours, and then grill it on the Weber, or gas grill, or whatever other source of flame is available.

When I can't do that, I'll slice it thinly and either broil it or fry it up in a skillet, but that sure isn't my first choice.

[jschyun]

Bulgogi with Cucumber Kimchi, Jap Chae Noodles, Mungbean Pancakes and Chicken Rice.

Sorry for the out of focus photo...

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Dang, you really are Korean. But what is chicken rice? You should be eating plain rice or rice mixed with grains or beans and stuff like that, to be truly one with your people.

[Jason Perlow]

Rice cooked with a bit of chicken stock in it. Its that extra bit of Malaysian or Hainanese in me that I can't get rid of, like that bit of Humanity that Mr. Spock has.

[torakris]

even out of focus it still looks great!!

I was thinking about your bulgogi dinner as I was on my third plate of peel and eat shrimp.....

[chefzadi]

I think Hawaii has a lot more second and third generation Koreans than we do here on the East Coast - Your method does sound very interesting though, I probably want to try it that way sometime.

EDIT: I just realized you live in England... You probably don't even HAVE Korean butchers there, lol.

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Actually a topic I'm very interested in is how foods evolve through first- second- and third-generation permutations. My Korean grandmother, for example, left Korea when she was only 16 but lived in the Korean community all her life (first in Honolulu, later in LA, but long before Koreatown). She never even really learned to speak more than pidgin English. Yet her cooking, though pure Korean in every sense, would have been quite different from modern cooking in Korea today. Tastes there evolved from her time; and of course she had access to different ingredients. But she was always fiercely proud of doing things the right way. She and her friends campaigned for Korean independence and she liked to recall that she once cooked tubu tchigae for Syngman Rhee. The strong armed autoritarian and first President of the Republic of Korea, so she always claimed, sighed in ectsasy and said that hardly anyone could still cook the old traditional foods like she did.

Here's another more radical bulgogi varation.

Marc

PS You're quite right, Jason, no Korean butchers down here in Devon!

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Interesting question. Not only do tastes evolve over time so does the availabilty of ingredients. My wife came to the State in the mid- 70's just at the beginning of the mad Korean immigration rush. There was only one Korean market in LA called Kal's or something, she thinks it was on Western Blvd. And a couple of Chinese-Korean restaurants. Anyway her mother made everything from scratch even the Jangs (Dwen Jang, Kochujang, Kanjang), Big urns in the backyard. Now in K-town in Los Angeles is huge. It's like a mini Seoul. Anyway, my wife has been back to Korea alot of times (over a hundred) over the years. She remembers the first time she went back in to Seoul 1978, she felt like she was going to starve. There was enough to eat but not much variety. Her parents had to go to a special store for her just to get cow's milk. She says the food situation in terms of availability of raw ingredients. prepared foods and number of restaurants started to change dramatically right before the Olympics in Korea and that every year it just got better and better. The Korean food we eat now is a thousand times more plentiful than what it used to be. It's changed alot.

My wife gets all of her homemade jangs from her mother. She's a fantastic cook and could easily learn how to make them. But it's doubtful that she ever will. We just don't use enough of it to make it worthwhile. Another related point is that language changes. When my wife's family left Korea they were still using a lot of Japanese loan words such as dahmanegi for yang pah. Apparently there was a campaign in Korea to "clean" out Japanese words. I don't know what my kids will be cooking at home when they are older, no doubt there versions of Korean, Algerian and French food.

Oh yeah. At home I prefer my bulgogi cooked in a pan. Gotta have those pan juices. That domed shaped thing is just too hard to clean.

Edited January 16, 2005 by chefzadi (log)

[Soup]

Bulgogi and rice almost as good as bacon and rice.

I use a marinade recipe very similar to the one posted and its very good. I fact I made it tonight for the Karbi dinner my son has been requesting all week. The grill is out of storage and we are going to the first test drive tomorrow. As I was making the marinade, I thought about my favor karbi which is at Woo Lea Oak (a chain). Their ribs taste different both in the cut and in the marinade. Anyone have their recipe?

Soup

[touaregsand]

But for home cooking (admittedly third-generation Korean American homestyle, but hey, this is how Halmoni, who came over to Hawaii as a 16 year old picture bride in the 1920s, always did it), I never ever use thinly sliced meat. Cut is (British) rump or sirloin or ribeye with plenty of fat and marbling (my mother used to get damn good results with chuck, believe it or not). What we do is slash the steak deeply in a diamond pattern, not all the way through, but nearly. Then pound with a meat hammer to open the piece up so that's its almost lacey but so you can still pick up the piece of meat with tongs. Then massage in that marinade lovingly (the smell of pungent garlic and ginger and soy and scallions and toasted sesame seeds is irresistable - so why resist? I always nibble on some raw marinaded beef while I'm doing this, for this is but a variation of yukhoe after all). Then cook over hot charcoal or in the pan, as is your wont, and serve with the aforementioned mountain of hot steamed white rice.

This is how my parents did it at home when we were still in living in Seoul. They didn't use a hammer, they used the back of a knife instead. And like Marco I snuck pieces of raw meat.

When we moved to Los Angeles in 1975 there was only one semi-Korean market on Western Blvd. The thin cut bulgogi wasn't widely available to the consumer untill a few years later. Up untill then it was really a restaurant cut. So Marco Polo's halmuni's methods were still the homestyle way not that long ago.

Edited April 22, 2005 by touaregsand (log)

[touaregsand]

Bulgogi and rice almost as good as bacon and rice.

I use a marinade recipe very similar to the one posted and its very good.  I fact I made it tonight for the Karbi dinner my son has been requesting all week.  The grill is out of storage and we are going to the first test drive tomorrow.  As I was making the marinade, I thought about my favor karbi which is at Woo Lea Oak (a chain).  Their ribs taste different both in the cut and in the marinade.  Anyone have their recipe?

Soup

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I like to keep it simple, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic and freshly ground black pepper.

Possible traditional additions include:

Scallions

Sesame seeds

Ginger

Grated Korean pear

Finely grated toasted walnuts

Sweet onions (sliced or grated)

Honey

Nouvelle additions:

Jalapeno pepper

Sriracha

Coca Cola or 7 up

Worchestire sauce

Coffee

There's more, this if off the top of my head.

[Gastro888]

So how does one prevent the kal bi from burning on the grill due to the sugar in the marinade? Do you just drain it? Wash it off? (The horror!)

Someone please help - this has always been my Waterloo!

[touaregsand]

So how does one prevent the kal bi from burning on the grill due to the sugar in the marinade?  Do you just drain it?  Wash it off?  (The horror!)

Someone please help - this has always been my Waterloo!

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What kind of grill are you using?

My parents use a gas grill. And they just scrub it with a steal brush when the sugars in the marinade start to burn and stick to the grill. Or they grill in one of those electric grills from Korea. Even this has to be wiped clean during the cooking/eating process. At Korean restaurants it's not uncommon for the waitress to change grills during dining when it starts to get crusted with the marinade.

All this is to say, that in the over 3 decades I've been eating Korean bbq there is no solution to your waterloo.

[torakris]

Last night I was watching a Japanese tv program called "Sekai Maru Mie Terebi" this is a program that shows different (normally human interest) tv shows from all over the world.

One of the spotlights was a Korean gourmet program all about beef in Korea, they showed various BBQ restaurants from all over Korea specializing in various grilled beef dishes. The most interesting segment was when they showed people grilling the beef (kalbi with the bone) outside in the snow. They would grill the meat, then toss it into the snow, pack it in for a moment or two and then retreive it and grill it again before eating. They said this made it very tender

Has anyone ever heard of this?

does it really make it tender?

[touaregsand]

I had never heard of this. I had to call my parents to ask. I'll quote my mom "such a thing cannot exist. It's a joke made up by someone. Sounds like a new gimmick."

[Jason Perlow]

Tonight I made Korean Barbecue to document for Off The Broiler.

[melonpan]

looks proper! looks positively delish!

[Jason Perlow]

Yeah, I think for a roundeye I do it okay.

[jschyun]

Where the hell is the rice?

--the galbi looks good but i need to see rice before salivation kicks in. great, now i'm hungry again. spinach looks good

Edited April 27, 2006 by jschyun (log)

[Jason Perlow]

It's on the side, there wasn't room on the plate. I didn't photograph it. It was also not white short grain rice, it was leftover latino-style seasoned yellow rice that we made over the weekend to go with some pork chops. We make a lot of rice dishes in this house.

Edited April 27, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[jschyun]

i was just kidding. is the packaged ssamjang decent? I don't recall the last time i had any.

[Jason Perlow]

i was just kidding.  is the packaged ssamjang decent?  I don't recall the last time i had any.

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Yeah it was actually pretty good. The problem is that Han Ah Reum has like 20 brands of that stuff, and they all look kinda similar, I can't read or understand Hangul, so I narrowed it down to the small containers, where there was like six brands I could choose from. I picked the one with the least amount of additives (written in English by the import company) in it. I showed it to a Korean lady in the aisle shopping with me and asked her which one was good and she said the one I was holding, so I went with that.