How to Make Beef Bulgogi (Korean Marinated Beef)

Today we're making the Korean classic bulgogi. I love this dish. It translates to fire meat. You know it's going to be good. It's so easily customizable and it's packed full of flavor. And Dan's here. He's going to show us how to make a great version at home. So this is one of my favorite dishes and the first time I had it was well over a decade ago. My friend Song made his grandmother's recipe for me and I was just totally smitten. It's this gorgeous thinly sliced beef, really well seasoned and it's wrapped in a lettuce leaf. You pop the whole thing in your mouth and it's just like it's perfect. Grandma cooking is the best cooking. It's the best kind of cooking and one of the reasons that it's so flavorful is you make this sauce called ssamjang and it is built on two really delicious fermented paste. We're going to start with the whites and light green part of four scallions and these are just minced thin. And then we have a quarter cup of doenjang. So this is fermented soybean paste and it's packed with umami, savoriness and some good salt. This forms the backbone of this sauce. The next one is gochujang. So they're both jangs which is a fermented paste or sauce in Korean food. They're so savory and they add complexity to tons of dishes. So this is a tablespoon of gochujang. This adds sweetness and spice, again a little bit more savoriness as well. We're going to loosen this up with just a tablespoon of water. We've also got two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil, some really nice nuttiness there and then finally one minced garlic clove. So much flavor. So I'm just going to stir this together. Beautiful. This is lovely with pork and you see it's served with all different kinds of meat. Today we're going to make a beef bulgogi. This is going to be so good with it. Okay. I'm just going to set that aside and then let's pop over here and we're going to get to the beef but first we're going to make a pickle. In Korean cuisine there are so many pickles whether they're quick ones or fermented ones like kimchi. We're going to make one of the simplest ones which starts with a cup of rice vinegar and this is the unseasoned kind. We're going to season it ourselves. Two tablespoons of sugar and then one and a half teaspoons of salt. So it's super simple pickling brine. That is all dissolved. So we're going to use radish for this and normally Korean radish it's a really big white one. This is a daikon which is similar and works really well in this recipe. It's a little bit more readily available here in the states. So this is one pound. First I'm just going to peel it. So I'm just going to lop off the tip and the end there and we're going to make matchsticks out of these. One and a half inches here on the length and we go about quarter inch. I love this kind of Hadrian's wall you're building here. I feel like I'm a dealer at a casino. Exactly. So now that I've cut them in one direction I basically just stack them up run your knife through and finish them up. Now I'm going to transfer them over to our quick pickle brine. Stir these make sure that they're all submerged in our brine there. So these will be ready in about 30 minutes which is awesome. Truly quick pickle but they can hang out in the fridge for up to 24 hours and they'll just get nicer. Fabulous. So I'm going to set this aside also. Now we can finally get to our beef. That is gorgeous. So beautiful ribeye. Now if you have a good Korean market near you they sell gorgeous thinly sliced steak. It's like machine sliced and absolutely go for that. It is made for it. It's wonderful. If you don't have access to it this is a really easy way to do it yourself and you can obviously choose the cut that you want. Ribeye is really nice and tender. Takes up flavor really nicely and it's a favorite for this for sure. So I'm just going to do a little bit of trimming. Basically take off this big piece of fat here but you don't have to do much. A little bit of fat will be nice in there. One of the great things about ribeye has all that marbling in it. Exactly. There's so much flavor and fat in there. So I'm just going to cut this into about one and a half inch wide pieces. So it's really going to be about three pieces here. We're going to go back on the plate. Beef like this that's fresh. It's really hard to slice thin. It's squishy. So we're actually going to freeze it for a bit. Not until it's solid but until it is firmed up a little bit. 35 to 40 minutes. Okay so our steak is nice and cold. You can check out how firm it is. Right? Proof? Right. So that's great. It's going to make it so much easier to slice and my goal with slicing here is to actually do it this way so that we're cutting against the grain as we go down and just go as thin as we can. They don't have to be perfect and if some are small it doesn't matter. You won't notice in the final dish. Thinness is more important. Exactly. Just go as thin as you can. So I'm just going to keep going until all of these pieces have turned into nice thin strips. All right and that is it. Beautifully done. Nice pile of beautiful ribeye. Nice and thinly sliced. This is not a super traditional step for bulgogi but you do see it a lot in Chinese stir fries and a trick that we use in the test kitchen a ton and that is to give it a baking soda treatment. So I've got a tablespoon of water in this bowl and I'm adding a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. This is a really powerful tenderizer and it works immediately. Unlike marinades they can take a long time to actually do their work. It makes it so the proteins don't bond together as tightly. Keeps it really really tender. So I'm just going to stir this together. Helps hold on to a lot more moisture too. Great. So I'm just going to transfer this over to the bowl and stir to coat. Now while this sits for five minutes I'm going to go wash my hands for the next step. Okay so now it is time for our marinade where we're going to get a ton of the flavor into this beef. We're going to start with a quarter cup of onion. We've got a quarter cup of sugar. Three tablespoons of soy sauce. More and more flavor. I have four cloves of garlic. Tablespoon of toasted sesame oil. So that shows up in the ssamjang and then also in the marinade. And then finally a quarter of a teaspoon of pepper. So I'm Alright that looks beautiful. Okay so we're going to go right into our beef here. So I'm just going to stir this to combine and make sure all of it is covered in that nice marinade. It's smelling like bulgogi. I mean it really is that potent aroma. Sweet and savory. Absolutely. That awesome onion in there. Beautiful. Okay great. Let's clean up a little bit and then it'll be time to cook. Okay. Alright it is time to cook. So we've got our beautiful marinated beef. I've got two teaspoons of vegetable oil heating over medium-high heat. You want just until shimmering then it doesn't need to be smoking. Okay. We're going to get all of our beef in at once. So we're going to cook this without moving it just on this first side here for about a minute just to get a little bit of browning. Now this version in the skillet as opposed to being out on the grill it's not about getting a ton of browning on it. Right. We have so much flavor from the marinade but this allowed it to do a little bit and then we'll stir after that. Sounds good. Alright so it's been about a minute now I'm going to stir and our goal here is over the next three or four minutes is just to stir and get everything cooked through so we see no more pink beef but you don't need to go any further than that. If you do go a little further that baking soda is going to help protect it. Right but you're not looking to turn over every single piece of beef. Okay. Like we'll get some browning like that which is great but the rest of it doesn't need to go. Okay so I see no more rosy beef in there that means we are done. The final part is those scallion greens. Right. So cut into about one and a half inch pieces just for 30 seconds that way they retain a little bit of crunch. Obviously they're beautiful but a little bit more texture in there as well. Lovely. Beautiful. Okay so this is done I'm going to get it out of here and onto my platter. Oh looks so good. That looks brilliant. Oh my gosh. So good. It is time to eat and this is one of the fun and interactive things to eat as well. So the way that Song showed me how to do it we can do it together. Okay. Is start with a beautiful piece of red leaf lettuce and then a dab of our samjang and you know you can control how much spice and intensity you want based on how much you add and then just a little bit of beef you don't need a lot. A little scallion and then he really loved it with a little bit of sliced raw garlic. Just wrap it all up into a tidy little package. Little bundle. Little bundle and then you just pop it all in. The whole thing. The whole thing. You go ahead. This is why I love bulgogi so much. Everybody is so intense. The samjang adds so much complexity and punch and then that garlic I love that just it's a sharpness that kind of washes it all it's really nice. Of course you've got the pickle. Some rice. Really nice pickle to kind of refresh in between bites. That is so refreshing. Pickly. Refreshing. Crisp. I'd keep that in my fridge all the time. Oh yeah. I think you and I have a few more bundles to make. We definitely do. Thanks Dan. You're welcome. Stupendous. And if you want to make beautiful bulgogi at home make a quick samjang cut semi-frozen pieces of ribeye into thin slices. Toss the steak with water and baking soda and then a potent marinade. Cook the steak for just minutes in the pan and the best part assemble them into little bundles any way you wish. So from America's Test Kitchen a beautiful brilliant beef bulgogi. Fight you for that one. I got my own. I'll fight you for that one. A lot of fighting going on here. Thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen. What'd you think? Well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel. See you later. I'll see you later.