Bulgogi – Korean Classic Marinated Beef
Bulgogi is a Korean traditional marinated meat dish, normally with slices of beef but can also be with pork or chicken. This is a popular main dish for family dinner as everyone like it because of its tender texture and sweet caramelised taste. Also, it’s very festive dish for celebrating summer time as you can cook on the grill and wrap in fresh lettuce, a company with many colourful vegetables. This is why I chose this dish as a Korean menu for A Weekend Escape event which is happening in one of the Austrian Hut in this August. There will be mainly Austrian Hut foods but we wanted to make our time at Hut a little bit special and add this Korean menu and let visitors tastes some Korean flavour on top of one of Austrian mountain. It could be an unusual but unique experience, I think. What do you think? Maybe you can come and try it yourself!
This classic marinated grilled beef dish, Bulgogi, is also often stir-fried in a pan in the home kitchen and you can eat with steamed rice and some small salad aside, a simple but delicious dinner for two is done! Try to make it today with my recipe and taste one of the Korean most successful culinary dishes at your home. If you’ve tried to make the Korean multi-purpose soy sauce and have it in the fridge, this is the time to use it.
Bulgogi Ingredients
How to Cut
Marination
Oi Banchan (Cucumber Salad Side Dish)
Recipe
It’s Korean classic and most well known culinary dish with marinated beef. Grill or stir-fry to bring out the taste of the natural meat and veggie flavour. This tender and caramelised salty-sweet dish is perfect for family dinner to celebrate beautiful summer sunset!
- 600 g beef
- 1-2 onion
- 1-3 spring onion
- 1-2 carrot
- 3-5 mushrooms (Shiitake mushroom is ideal)
- 1 cup multi-purpose soy sauce
- pinch of salt and pepper
- 1 cucumber
- 1 or 1/2 garlic clove (if you don't like, you can skip garlic)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar/honey/plum syrup
- 1 tsp chilli powder/flake
- 1/2 tsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp vinegar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
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Prepare vegetables by washing except for mushroom, for the mushroom, just remove the dirt from it and not touching too much water.
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Cut all the vegetable in slices and the same size as possible.
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Slice a piece of meat thinly as possible and cut in slices same as the vegetable.
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Pinch of salt and pepper to the sliced meat.
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Mix the meat with half amount of multi-purpose soy sauce and massage them nicely.
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Add all prepared vegetables and the rest of the sauce and marinate for 30 mins.
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Stir-fry or grill them quickly.
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Serve with steamed rice and some salad aside.
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Cut cucumber in half long and then slice in half circle shape.
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Add crushed garlic with sliced cucumber into a bowl.
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Pour salad dressing and mix nicely all together.
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Keep it in the fridge before serving.
Behind the Kitchen
In Korea, you can go to butcher and order beef meat for Bulgogi, then they give you thinly sliced beef which is ready to cook without prep. As Bulgogi is one of the common dishes, butchers prepare meat only for this dish. But in Austria, it’s hard to expect this as every country has a different way of cutting meat depends on the way of cooking and the type of dish. So, this is my way to prepare the meat which as close as possible to Korean way using Austrian meat. I use ‘Kochfleisch’ (meat for cooking in German) which is a meat part of shoulder or leg without much fat and tendon. Get them in a piece and slice them thin as much as possible, if you have ham cutting machine, this could be the best tool to prepare the meat. The reason for cutting meat in a thin slice is for better marination.
Tips for Being Green
+ This dish is not friendly food for vegetarian and vegan foodies, but here are ingredients which you can replace the meat. Instead of beef, you can use more mushrooms, Shiitake mushroom is the ideal but any mushroom is fine. Also, I would recommend tofu but don’t marinate tofu with other vegetables together, cook separately (fry or bake in cube shape) and add at the end.
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