Galbi Gone Wild

Despite the fact that we live in Korea, we decided to try and make a Korean BBQ Feast at home. Why? We REALLY wanted Galbi, but didn't want to spend the $15 bucks it takes to get it.

After going to the market to get the last few ingredients we needed, we set out on our journey to make something similar to what the popular restaurant Sorae serves, the side dishes, and even dwenchan jjigae included.

The result was delicious, and only required us opening our doors and windows a few times to prevent the fire alarm from going off (and, we've realized the crack in our stone plate was the smoke-causing-culprit, so hopefully next time, if there IS a next time, we can avoid the problem.)

Step 1: The rice
Always start by making the rice, because it usually takes the longest. Nothing is worse than having dinner ready, but waiting on the rice.
We wash, soak, and then cook the rice. We don't have a rice cooker, so we do it on the stove top. Soak for 10-30 min, bring to a rolling boil, turn the heat down as low as possible, let it simmer for 10 minutes, then put the heat on high for 10 seconds. Shut it off, leave the lid on until you're ready to serve it.



Step 2: Chop chop chop-
We cut all the veggies in one go- onion, garlic, potatoes, zucchini, lettuce, etc. We put all our dwenchang jjigae ingreients right into the dolsots, but we waited to make the soup until we were half way through our meal (so we could have it in the middle of the meal, just like at the restaurant!)

Step 3: Side dishes-
The meat is a matter of cooking and eating as you go, so having all the sides ready is a must. We made bean sprouts by lightly boiling them (I used the leftover water in the soup), then adding the sesame oil, sesame seeds, soy sauce, chili flakes, pepper, and I like a little gochucjang even though I know it's not part of the recipe.



We also made our dipping sauce (water, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, wasabi) and washed the lettuce.

Step 4: Fire up the grill. We used a little camping stove on the table like the cheap galbi places. We started with the bacon (since we didn't have sam gep sal, we improvised) so that it would oil up the grill to help cook the onion and potatoes, and then we cooked our meat; shabu shabu beef since that is all we had. I marinated it a bit in sesame oil and soy sauce, and then we just threw it on the hot stone plate for a few seconds and ate it up.




Step 5: Finish off your soup. Heat the dolsot and veggies with a little oil, add the chili flakes and bean paste, then add the water (I used the leftover sprout water). When the potatoes are done throw in tofu and green onion if you have it, and mmmmm... It's just like Sorae!




Step 6: Moan and groan as you deal with all the dishes, and realize if you live in Korea it's worth the extra few bucks to have SOMEONE ELSE do all the work to make galbi! Instead of washing the dishes, go to the corner store for another beer and then relax with full bellies.