Bulgogi, Korea's wet meat
Grandma never measures
Look online and you will find a ton of bulgogi recipes, all of them probably decent enough but way too sweet.
Korean food has gotten sweeter in the past few decades. Even my mom thinks so.
Bulgogi is thinly sliced beef marinated overnight or for longer in a soy, sesame oil, garlic, and ginger mixture. Quite often, people add pureed Korean pear, apple, or kiwi (the acid) with the honey and sugar.
If you ask grandma for measurements, she’ll just say a little of this, a little of that, a palmful, until the texture looks right. Nobody measured in the old days.
Any food blogger who gives exact measurements is doing it wrong, especially with bulgogi. One size does not fit all.
Yesterday, my Irish-German-American husband made bulgogi, using a base recipe from Maangchi, tweaking the flavor as he went along, which you absolutely have to do. Taste as you go, then, if it’s too sweet, add a little more soy or water. If it’s too salty, add more honey.
For Ed’s first time, the bulgogi turned out tender, punchy, and full-flavored (umami), neither too salty nor too sweet. The perfect amalgam.
After moving to America, my mom developed her own recipe using limited American ingredients in the 1970s: soy sauce, sesame oil (or peanut oil), sugar, garlic and ginger powder, and black pepper, with chopped green onion.
You can too.
Variations are as limited as your imagination, and personal taste. Also, you don’t have to cook the meat in its marinade if you’re not a fan of boiled meat (that’s what I grew up on and why I hated bulgogi for so long).
My brother invented a charred way of cooking bulgogi in the frying pan. He took the beef slices out of the marinade, then fried it up in oil and butter on blistering high heat. Better if you can grill it.
Traditionally, you make a ton of bulgogi, let it marinate in the fridge for days, then freeze leftovers. Leftovers can be turned into bibimbap (mixed rice dish, using leftover banchan — small side dishes), bulgogi fried rice, and gimbap (Korean sushi).
I’ve made a few banchan (shredded carrots, zucchini, cucumber, King oyster mushrooms) over the weekend, and plan to make two more (soy bean sprouts, spinach) tomorrow, for when Ed wants to whip up a bowl of bibimbap.
The key to easy banchan/namul is sesame oil, soy or salt, and garlic (powder or freshly grated). In the case of zucchini, salted shrimp.
Below is my husband’s bulgogi recipe, in his words. His is different because of the addition of three types of vinegar.
Bulgogi recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 med. Fuji apple (or any apple)
1/4 large onion
ginger
green onion
soy sauce, light, dark, or regular
brown sugar
black pepper
sesame oil
toasted sesame seeds (crushed)
garlic powder
garlic salt
rice-wine vinegar
white vinegar
apple-cider vinegar
water (to dilute marinade if too salty)
Use the brown sugar, rice-wine vinegar, white vinegar, and apple-cider vinegar to get a good sweetness balance to your taste. You will need to play with the relative amounts of these ingredients to achieve your magic balance. Everyone is different.
I like a lot of ginger, so I use more than usual. You can adjust to taste.
Basically combine all marinade ingredients in a food processor/blender and puree.
Add thinly sliced ribeye or other thinly sliced beef to the marinade and coat all the meat evenly. Let marinade work its magic for several hours in the refrigerator. Overnight is best, but at least six hours.
Cook on a medium-hot to very hot grill, skillet, or wok, and let beef sear to get some char.
Serve with rice, veggies, and kim chi.
