BAD Reads
It's Grilling Season
I met the lady whose house adjoins ours (townhouse condo) yesterday, and she said "What was that you were cooking on Memorial Day? It smelled SO good!"
What it was was Korean barbecue-- you'll usually see it as bulgoki or bulgogi if you have a Korean restaurant near you.
The meat--usually beef, but we also use chicken--is sliced in thin slices, marinaded in soy sauce, sesame oil and other good things (including garlic, of course!) and cooked on the grill or in the broiler. Often in Korean restaurants, the marinaded meat is brought to your table and you cook it yourself on a small tabletop grill.
Bulgogi is our favorite barbecue meal. We even like to take it on our summer trips to Chincoteague--we just prepare the meat before leaving home and carry it in our cooler in a big plastic container for grilling at the cottage. It doesn't matter if we leave it for a day or two-- the longer the marinade, the better it is!
If you are lucky enough to live in a place with Asian supermarkets, you may find beef presliced for bulgogi. But even most standard American supermarkets will have soy sauce and sesame oil if they have a Chinese/Asian food section.
Traditionally bulgogi is eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves, but we just prefer ours over rice. There is no sauce, so I often sprinkle a little sesame oil over mine.
Bulgogi is easy to make and always a hit with our guests. Our girls love it too, and I can't resist eating it cold from the fridge.
(Though not, as one of my brother-in-laws once did, RAW in the marinade!)
Try it. Odds are, your neighbors too will be asking "What's that delicious smell?"
KOREAN GRILLED BEEF (Bul-Kogi)
This is equally delicious made with chicken breasts. I usually use chuck steak or chuck roast for beef. The original version of this recipe (from the NY Times International Cookbook) called for rib, flank, or sirloin steak, but the cheaper cuts work just as well.
MEAT: 2 lbs of beef or chicken (see note above) Slice the meat very thinly across the grain. Place in a large container that will hold all the meat and the marinade:
MARINADE: (I usually double this, but this is the basic proportions)
3 chopped green onions
4 cloves minced garlic (we use much, much, MUCH more!)
1/4 cup + 1 Tbs soy sauce (low sodium is better. If you are near a Trader Joe's, their low sodium soy is EXCELLENT)
2 T sesame oil (look in the Chinese food section near the soy sauce)
1/4 cup sugar
2 T sherry or stock (I've also used white wine)
1 T sesame seeds
Combine all ingredients except the sesame seeds.
Put the sesame seeds in a frying pan and toast them. (If you are lucky, you may find PRE-toasted sesame seeds in an Asian or Middle Eastern food market) Grind them in a food processor or with a mortar and pestle. They don't have to be finely ground--just crushed a bit. Add the sesame seeds to the marinade.
Pour the marinade over the meat, cover and refrigerate for 4 to 48 hours--the longer the better.
Grill on a charcoal grill or broil in your kitchen broiler. (The Man cooks it for 3-6 minutes on one side, then flips it, but it depends on your grill and your taste in meat)
Serving: We eat this with rice,Korean style spinach (wilted in boiling water, dressed with equal parts of soy,sesame oil and garlic, plus some more sesame seeds) and cucumber salad (strips of cucumber marinated in vinegar and enough sugar to make the vinegar sweet). You can have kimchee (Korean pickled cabbage) as well--it's becoming more available in supermarkets, though we generally don't have it--the smell is just too strong for the girls, used as they are to the Man's garlic!
