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Welcome to the FoodCraft Blog. Created because most nerds I know can't cook. This information troubles me and I will try to keep the recipe/guides as simple and self explanatory as possible while also being descriptive. So in the words of Robert Rodriguez "You gotta' eat for the rest of your life. You might as well know how [to cook]."
Now considering this is Team Liquid dot Net, a place where many foreigners dream to play Starcraft as good as the Koreans, lets start this blog with a Korean Barbeque! There are many delicious KBBQ recipes but for this issue we will be focusing in on beef Bulgogi. Bulgogi is traditionally a spicy/sweet beef dish cooked over an open flame. It has a sweet after taste without losing any of the rich meaty flavors associated with beef. In addition, it is not a difficult recipe. It only takes a little bit of extra preparation time to create the marinade. Beyond that, it's as easy as killing drones with blue flame hellions.
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*Click to enlarge!*- 1lb Thinly Sliced Sirloin Beef
- 2 tbsp. Cooking Rice Wine
- 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
- 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
- 1 tbsp. Fresh Garlic (about 2-3 cloves based on size)
- 1 tbsp. Toasted Sesame Seeds
- 2 tbsp. Sesame Oil
- 5 Green Scallion Onions
- 1 1/2 Bosc Pear (based on avg. size)
- 1 tsp. Fresh Ground Black Pepper
*Notes about Ingredient choice*
- You can use any kind of beef/steak you want as long as you cut the slices of beef against the grain. (Against the grain refers to cutting perpendicular of the muscle fiber. Generally you can ask your butcher to do this for you.)
- A Korean style soy sauce(Ganjang) is really best for this recipe. It's made differently from regular types of soy sauce but sometimes it can be a bit hard to find outside of Korea. Sempio is my favorite brand of soy sauce but you really can use what ever kind of soy sauce you have available to you. Just try to use something with decent legs*.
- I realize the type of soy sauce I have in the picture is for use in soups. I still use it for this marinade because I personally like the flavor it produces in the final product. Plus I bought it for soups and just happened to run out of ganjang when I decided to make this. ^^;;
- You can use white sugar instead of brown sugar if you prefer.
-VERY IMPORTANT- No matter what you change in this recipe, use equal amounts of sugar and soy sauce. Favoring one more then the other produces the wrong consistency within the marinade and makes it less effective in the meat permeation process.
One of the best, and my personal favorite thing about cooking, is that you can change and manipulate most recipes to suit your individual tastes. A great example of this is the fruits and vegetables in this recipe. I know people who use kiwi, yellow onions, and carrots in their marinades. I personally decided to hone those flavors out in favor of the more subtle green onion and pears. Another example of this is the lack of chili paste in my marinade. This non-spicy version of bulgogi was adapted for my girlfriend, who is extremely sensitive to capsaicin and is unable to eat spicy foods. ♥
One last piece of advice on adding different things to the marinade. Try to avoid large amounts of citrus fruits or other high acidity food stuffs. In an overnight marinade it can pre-cook the meat before it even hits the grill. The reaction is similar to ceviche and for this recipe, we don't want that.
*legs refers to the liquids thickness or ability to sick to the sides of a glass. It's more common when talking about wine but it applies to soy sauce as well.
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*Click to enlarge!*Now it's time to get everything ready to be mixed together. It actually helps to prepare everything at once so that when you create the marinade there are not any long awkward breaks in between the steps. A +1 timing attack is way more effective when you actually wait for +1 to finish. The same concept applies in cooking. Wait until everything is ready before you go ahead and try to make something. It makes the whole process much easier. ^^
This is the boring part. Pack the brown sugar in the measuring cup so you get an accurate amount. Clean the green onions and remove the bottoms then chop them into small rings or angled rings. Slice up the pears and remove the cores. Pre-measure out the soy sauce, sesame seeds, sesame oil, rice wine and put them into small glasses or cups ready to dump into the mix. Everything here is pretty simple... Except the garlic.
Garlic can be a fickle, pain in the ass ingredient because it's sticky and will make you smell like garlic for hours. But it's delicious and 100% worth it so I am going to use this space to tell you 2 of my family's techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation.
The first one is how to chop garlic. Normally in cooking you want the strongest flavors you can get. The easiest way to do this is to maximize the destruction of the material, AKA chop it more and smaller. With garlic, you have to peel the skin off of it first which can be difficult if you just try to peel or cut it off. How you get around this is by first chopping off the ends of the garlic then putting something flat(I use my chefs knife as you can see in the second picture of this section) between your hand and the garlic, then crush it. As you can see in the 3rd picture, the skin falls right off once the shape of the garlic has changed. Plus the crushing motion starts breaking it down so you have to chop it less but regardless, make sure you chop the garlic in very small pieces.
The second family trick I will share is how to remove the smell of garlic from your fingers once you have handled it. And make no mistake, if you handle garlic with your bare hands, you will smell like the inside of an Italian restaurant for hours. To remove the smell, wash your hands then find a piece of stainless steel and rub your garlic infested fingers against it. Generally silverware is made of stainless steel or more often then not, kitchen sinks tend to be made of stainless steel. I don't know how it works, but it works regardless. My grandmother could never explain it either. ^^;;
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*Click to enlarge!*
Now that all of the tedious prep work is out of the way, it's marinade time! The first tip I have for you when preparing the marinade is to go ahead and dedicated one hand to being your mixing hand and the other one for adding. The separation between the 2 jobs/hands makes it so much easier for the process to be smooth as well as making clean up a bit easier. That and you are going to want to constantly be mixing the bowl. The constant movement of raw meat can create tiny tears in the muscle fibers which act as pockets for the marinade to soak into. As well as pseudo-tenderizing the meat, making any stray sinewy pieces of meat less common.
Along with the constant movement, I have discovered that adding the contents in a particular order make the marinade creation process fluid as can be. Add them in this order.
- Dump the meat into a large bowl and separate as much as you can. Try to use a bowl with a lid to minimize the amount of air that escapes while you let it marinade.
- Add the cooking wine and move the meat in it until it's completely coated.
- Add the soy sauce and the brown sugar at the same time and continue to move it around until all of the brown sugar is broken down into the sauce. There should be no visible chunks of brown sugar when this step is complete.
- Add in the garlic and distribute it as evenly as you can. If you want to ensure you get some stronger garlic flavors, wiggle small pieces of it into the meat.
- Add the sesame seeds and aim for an even distribution around the bowl/meat.
- Add the sesame oil always as the last wet ingredient. I discovered the hard way that the thick oil can create problems with distribution of other ingredients if added first.
- Go ahead and dump in all of the veggies and fruit. They will be fairly large pieces so just keep mixing until you have them well woven into the marinade.
- And few cracks of pepper just before you seal up the bowl.
Once all of this is done, go ahead seal up the bowl and put it in a refrigerator and let it sit. A good time for the marinade is to go ahead and let it sit over night but if this is a last minute thing, 2 hours is the MINIMUM marination time. But again, I have to stress that I don't recommend it. A long marination time is one of those things that will ensure you get the desirable strong flavors that make KBBQ so distinct from other grilling styles. So if you want to make this to impress your friends(or a lady friend ;D) or just have a really high quality meal, let it marinade over night.
(Tangent :: If you really want to impress a girl/guy, bring them in as a "kitchen assistant" or "sous chef" and have her help out in the whole process! Plus an overnight marinade == easy second date! Cooking at home should be fun and social. Meals made while having fun tend to taste better. :D )
Well... since you will have to wait till tomorrow to cook this, go play some ladder games! ^^
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*Click to enlarge!*
Finally! The long wait is over and it's now time to reap the rewards of your labor! And yes I know there is a bit of "work" let but I actually find the grilling part fun and amusing. Come on, you get to play with fire! ;D
Once you take the marinade out of the fridge you should notice that the meat is much darker since when you last left it. This is good, that just means it has absorbed the soy sauce and all of those other wonderful flavors. Another thing to be aware of is that the meat will be a little harder to manipulate when just coming out of the refrigerator. Don't think about it too much, once the heat of the grill hits it, the meat will become easy to work with again.
The heat is very important when cooking the bulgogi. You want a nice, strong, consistent heat. Using charcoal grills is the preferred method but a propane grill or a frying pan will get the job done as well. What ever you use, just make sure it is hot. The best bulgogi I produce is when I can get the marinade to sear or char to the side of the meat while the meat cooks. This done directly through the high heat condition. If you can't get a heat like this, don't worry, you can still aim for the char marks by moving the meat as little as possible.
There is a technique you can cook steak with that revolves around a hot pan and barely moving the steak. The goal is that you cook the steak in sections (top then bottom, then sides, then middle) causing the outside of the steak to cook very fast and seal in the juices. The same concept applies here except since we are using such a thin piece of meat, we are really just aiming to lightly crisp the outsides of the meat. People who are familiar with a grill will know what I am talking about but for those of you that don't, I will help you as much as I can. <3
When you lay the meat on the grill, try to keep it as even as you can so it can cook at a predictable pace. With that said, keep an eye on it. If you ignore the grill you run the risk of forgetting about it. (This is not the time to go do ladder games. ^^) Try not to flip the meat until it's about 2/3 of the way cooked. You should be able to tell how far it's cooked by touch. It's should start to get more firm when it's getting done. Just try not to let it get "too" firm unless you like your meat to be the consistency of a hockey puck. <3
Another thing I do is take the pears from the marinade and have them cook along side the meat on the grill. They make a great accompaniment to the meat especially considering it was marinated in the same sauce. This is also why in all my pictures you can see that I left the pear slices a bit on the large side.
Once the meat and pears are cooked, you can pretty much eat it right off the grill. It has happened before that I ended up serving it to my guests directly off the grill and into eager tortillas, waiting in their hands. I personally like to eat the BBQ with my homemade tortillas but you can also serve it along side rice, noodles or a good bread. If you don't want bread or other starches in your meal then you can also serve it with some iceberg lettuce wraps. Or honestly any combination of things. Lettuce wraps with rice, tortillas with lettuce, or noodles and soup! You can serve it anyway that makes you happy.
I do however recommend a bottle of soju when it's time to eat. It is true that soju or a very dry rice wine is perfect to go with this meal. The flavors compliment each other like they were made with each other in mind. If you need a recommendation on a brand/style. Jinro Chamisul, Original or Fresh are my personal favorites.
Enjoy!
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Well that's it. That is my recipe for beef Bulgogi. I hope at least 1 person out there enjoys this blog and has a good meal because of it. That would absolutely make my day! Nothing makes me more happy, then seeing others happy.
If enough people like this blog then I will be happy to do more. I have plenty of recipes that I would not mind sharing with the community. Even if it's something as small and simple as my tortilla recipe or something more similar to this issue like daeji bulgogi. I even have some Artosis friendly vegetarian recipes if you prefer. ^^
Also, if there was something I did not cover in this recipe or anything you wish to have more information on, feel free to ask in the comments. I promise to answer as many inquires as I can.
One last thing. I'm still not sure how I feel about the name FoodCraft but to be honest it was the best I could come up with for now. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments!
-Cfood
