Sunday, June 23, 2013

Samgyupsal, or 삼겹살, or Korean pork belly dish!

Hello everyone,

A couple of days ago, Chang (my lil cuz) and I were home alone, and after some brainstorming on what to feed ourselves, we came up with a dish that got both of us incredibly hungry just thinking about it!  It is a dish every Korean knows very well, and is especially popular in our family; the 삼겹살.  
haha it sounds funny when you put 'the' in front of it  lol!
but here it is, in all of its about-to-be-wrapped-and-eaten glory!



Anyway, Samgyupsal is soo incredibly easy to make, and is so amazingly good!  I know, I know, I was trying to be mostly vegetarian, and I still am, but this is where the 'mostly' part comes into play  ;)  and!  I was eating a lot of vegetables with every single bite since it was wrapped in lettuce and sesame leaves!

This isn't really a recipe because you don't really need one,, but more of 'how to eat it' kind of a deal.

so what you need is some pork belly strips (it kind of looks like bacon, but it isn't processed so it is in its pure meat form) that you can get at your local Asian store, like H Mart.  I'm not sure american stores carry them...
some leafy veggies like lettuce and sesame leaves
and some ssamjang.  You can also get this at a Korean store, and I believe it's a mixture of red pepper paste and bean paste (daenjang).
oh, and of course, some rice.

these four ingredients will be plenty sufficient, but if you want to get fancy, you can have some dipping sauce that's a mixture of sesame oil and salt, some kimchi, and really anything else you want to dip your meat in and whatever else you want to put in your wrap.

The cooking is really simple.  Most of the time, you just cook the meat strips on a frying pan, but this time, I decided to try putting it in the oven.  I laid down a piece of foil on a baking sheet, then put the meat on the metal racks that are normally used to cool cookies...   That may sound weird, but I was improvising, and it actually worked really great!

Then, put it in the oven at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or so, and you should be good to go!  I'm really glad I tried this method, because look at all of the fat that dripped down from the meat!  Anyway, after getting over our shock at how fatty the meat was (though really, we knew going in how fatty the meat was...), we cut it all up to bite sized pieces like this!


now the part we've been quite impatiently waiting for...

First, select a couple pieces of lettuce and sesame leaves and whatever green goodness you want to wrap your Samgyupsal in.  We had an amazing selection from our garden, and somehow, the fact that we grew them made it taste just that much more delicious!


Then, you put a little bit of rice, then a piece of Samgyupsal, a little bit of Ssamjang, and if you want, a little bit of kimchi like I did there.


Ahh, and then, my dears, you just wrap it all up, and in it goes (all of it!) into your mouth!

oh man, just thinking about it makes me want to eat Samgyupsal again  haha

Somehow, between the two of us, we finished the whole rack of meat, even though we went in thinking there was no way we could finish even half of it, and we spent the rest of the day happily in a food coma.

I hope you get to try this sometime! If you go to a Korean BBQ place, you can order it there too, and you can cook it right in front of you on a grille!  ;)

Now, off I go to detox..  haha
Happy Sunday!
--Janny



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