Cooking Korean: Bulgogi

By Emsu

Growing up, my mom would frequently make bulgogi (grilled marinated beef), one of the Korean dishes many of my American family members had the pleasure of eating at family functions. My dad is a picky eater and rarely eats rice, but if my mom whips up her bulgogi, my dad will happily eat it with a heaping side of the rice.

I LOVE my mom's bulgogi, and even though she gave me her recipe so that I could start making it at home, I do believe in the Korean concept of sone maht, or "taste of one's hands." Say wha?? When I first heard this I thought it was a bit strange too, but through experience I've definitely come to accept that this is a thing. Basically, sone maht refers to how one's dish will always taste uniquely from another's dish even if both make the exact same recipe, because of the "taste of one's hands." I know my explaining it won't make this sound any less strange to those out there who have never heard this before, but I'm not quite sure what else to say. Really though, it's a thing.

Okay, so what I'm trying to say is that no matter what I do, I won't be able to make my bulgogi taste like my mom's. Nevertheless, it still tasted pretty good, and it was simple to make too.

Ingredients
1.5 lbs. beef (rump roast)
1 bundle of green onions (chopped)
5 cloves of garlic (crushed)
1 tsp. sesame oil
1 T sesame seeds
2 T sugar
1/4 c soy sauce

Combine all the ingredients (excluding the beef) into a large bowl and mix well. Thinly slice the beef and put the sliced beed into the mixture, mixing the ingredients well with your hands (mmm...sohn maht!).

One of my favorite items in the kitchen - a ceramic garlic holder!

Put two tablespoons of oil into a skillet and allow it to heat up before pouring the beef mixture into the pan. Quickly fry the meat until it is cooked to your liking.

The dish is best served atop or next to steamed white rice. Enjoyee!

Cooking Korean: Black Bean Noodles and Korean Pancakes

I grew up eating Korean food. My mom is Korean and made sure that her two girls would be able to eat kimchi and spicy food as well as she could. So, food-wise, I was in heaven when I first moved to Seoul in 2008, and gained 10 pounds within the first 2 months. Raus, on the other hand, was not exposed to Korean food until he moved to Korea, and it took him a little time to develop his own taste for the fermented goodness that makes up a lot of Korean cuisine. There are still a few things he's not a huge fan of, but one thing he is always game for is a heaping bowl of jjajjangmyun, or black bean noodles.

If you know your Korean food, you may also know that jajjangmyun is actually "Chinese Korean food" not straight up Korean…even though they serve it all over the place in Korea and maybe at a handful of places in China. But that's not important; what's important is that it's super delicious AND pretty easy to make, which also makes it AmAZiNg (sticky caps for emphasis).

The recipe I used was modified from Beyond Kimchee, a wonderful Korean food blog. If you want to make her recipe please click here. I followed it almost exactly, but you'll be able to tell from the photos that I somehow doubled on the amount of veggies and used the wrong kind of noodles. I assure you, it still tasted like Korea!  Most of the ingredients are found in your neighborhood grocery store, but you will probably need to venture to an Asian food store for the black bean paste and the proper noodles.

The recipe I used for the Korean pancakes (or pajeon) can be found here. It was modified heavily because I didn't decide to make this until the last minute and lacked some of the ingredients, but as long as you have flour, green onions, and soy sauce, you're golden!