The Best Korean Barbecue Dish You Haven't Tried Yet: Korean Duck Paella

We're at Tanah Jang, which is one of the most interesting Korean barbecue restaurants in Los Angeles. They only do one thing here. They just do duck. What I love about this place is that it's a unique expression of Korean barbecue. You get a sense of what happens when you focus on one thing. So we're actually getting the signature dish first. And the reason why, as she said, is that you want the fat to leach out and kind of coat the pan. You gotta plug that duck fat with, of course, kimchi. There's no appetizer here. There's no waiting around for the food to cook. It just comes out immediately. And that's what I love about Korean barbecue. We're ready to eat. The biggest difference that you'll find at a place like this is you actually want to preserve that fat. At other Korean barbecue restaurants, the grill pans are actually designed so the fat will leach off to the side. You know, not necessarily fall straight into the fire. Here, you want to save it all. Look at it. It's just clear and bubbling. We're going to start out with a bed of this lightly dressed lettuce. A little bit of these chives. A little bit of the daikon radish. This gives you a nice crunch. And for a different kind of crunch and a little sweetness, the pickled onion. Take some duck and dip it in some of this chili sauce. You just want to keep eating it. It's just pure, glorious duck. It's nice to start the meal this way because you're not really working with marinades or any kind of other flavors other than the vegetables. The duck itself comes straight through, which is beautiful. She was getting a little bit annoyed at my inability to cook this properly. So she's showing me what's up. This is called dduk jumeul-eop. This is a nice second course because you're not really worried about trying to preserve the form of the first cut, the rosgui. And you're cooking it after that first course, right? So there's a lot more of the clear duck fat that you're kind of cooking this in. She said with this one, you want to keep moving it around so that it cooks really evenly. You're not really getting flat pieces. No, this thing really lets off a lot of grease. So do not wear a shirt that you particularly like because it will get splattered. Man, there's like this noxious combination of duck juices and fat just bubbling. And you're essentially just steaming in it. There's so much fat weld up here. Look at this. Honestly, this kind of reminds me of Korean carnitas right now, right? It's just meat that's browning in its own fat. Once again, I'm going to follow the same kind of protocol. Get a little bit of salad. Aromatic chives. Crunchy daikon and pickled onion slivers. I like to dip it in a little bit of this chili sauce right here. Okay, I'm going to go for it. It's a little bit more of that meaty duck goodness that kind of progresses from that thinner sliced duck. Getting a little bit bigger flavor. It's still not gamey, but it's bolder and deeper and richer. And you get a lot more of that duck flavor. It's amazing. Going for course number three. This is the spicy marinated duck. Oh man, just immediately all the aromas of the peppers are just coming right at you. Whenever you have Korean barbecue, you always want to have the more marinated meats toward the end. Because you want to build up on that flavor. Look at that. Here we have the sweet, tangy, spicy, primarily spicy marinade on this duck. What you're really creating here, it's the perfect sauce. It's going to be the vehicle for our Korean paella. Cheers! I'm sacrificing this piece of meat to help deglaze the pan or take off some of the super tasty brown bits. With this cut, you're not going to get any browning because there's just too many juices. The way that I test out that it's done is I kind of push on the meat and see if the texture is firm enough. I'll just take a bite of this by itself. The chili actually doesn't really overwhelm and doesn't come forward. It really just assists the duck flavor. Let's try it with bean sprout. And I'll have a bite with this cabbage and ssamjang. Oh, I just want more of that. So we finished cooking our duck and we've got this super rich, layered sauce. Then the fried rice comes. Okay, so here's what we got. We got rice, kimchi, chives, and we have wild sesame seeds. It's going to give you that extra little crunch. What's amazing is that the fat and sauce to rice ratio is almost one to one. And you can see the color of this rice change. It's this beautiful deep red. When she's spreading the rice along the bottom of the pan, you're kind of getting that socorro that you would get on paella. But in Korean, we call that nurungji. And you can see that we took out our little plug of kimchi. And all the extraneous fat is pouring out very gently so that we're not kind of overwhelmed by all that duck fat. This, this is the kkudeok crust right here. I'm going to scrape some of this up, get the good flavor on the bottom. What I love is that you get a little bit of that crunch and crispy edge. It's definitely unctuous and fatty and rich. But you get a little pop of salt from each little piece of kimchi in there. When you have nurungji, it's that rice that's slightly browned on the bottom. You get a richer flavor, basically like toasted rice. I probably couldn't eat too much of this. But just to finish the meal off, it's nice to kind of cap it off with something, some carbs, with something really filling. Mmm. Crispy. And then, mmm. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to see more Korean barbecue, click here. Flavor is excellent. It's tender. And you don't have to slow roast this thing, you don't have to smoke it. This is brisket in a way you've probably never had.