Tag Archives: korean food

A Happy Accident: Jeyuk 제육볶음

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Jeyuk

Time to wipe the cobwebs off my blog and start writing again. It’s been a while. How one maintains a travel blog after years of travel comes to a halt has floated in and out of my mind lately, but I’m not going to dwell on it too much and just see where things go. 

Last weekend we were supposed to have a potluck dinner with our friends and I was going to make “Korean Pork Bulgogi Baozi” from a recipe I found on Pinterest. Baozi or bao is more of a Chinese dim sum dish and I was intrigued by the title of the recipe. Bulgogi in my experience is usually a beef dish served over rice. I didn’t realize until I started cooking that I was most definitely not making bulgogi, but jeyuk -something I haven’t eaten since living in Seoul.

I spent way more than I wanted to on a nice cut of pork loin at Whole Foods (I refuse to buy low quality meat, so prices are usually higher than my wallet likes) and began the cooking process. Halfway through I found out the pot luck was off so I chose not to make the dough for the bao buns and put the filling over rice instead, as one would with jeyuk.

For those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to have feasted on jeyuk, let me give you a hint as to what it tastes like. It’s spicy. Really spicy. When we ordered it in Korea we would only order one serving and split it over extra rice to make it more mild. I can handle spicy food, but only to a certain extent. 

Once I realized I was making jeyuk, I needed to alter the recipe I was going off just a tad bit to make it taste more authentic. Here’s what I came up with: Continue reading →

Making Dak Galbi in the USA

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If you follow my blog, then you know I think dak galbi is the most fantastic Korean dish EVER. I love it.

I love it so much in fact, that I’ve written about why it’s my favorite, the time we drove to another city just to eat dalk galbi in its hometown, and feasting on dak galbi in Los Angeles.  That’s three posts all devoted to one dish… and here’s a fourth.

I’ve finally tried to make dak galbi at home in the US and I was successful! There were only two small flaws in my cooking experience. The first is that I didn’t get ddeok because I couldn’t find it at the Asian grocery stores nearby. I plan on making it from scratch sometime, but that will have to wait for a different day. The second issue was that we didn’t have a dak galbi pan. Usually dak galbi is cooked on a large flat pan in the middle of a table at a restaurant. We are fairly limited right now in our cooking equipment so I did it in a deep wok. This certinaly cooked everything, but I didn’t get crispy bits like I would have had I used a flat shallow dak galbi pan.

For those of you interested in making awesome dak galbi at home, here’s a recipe I created from about seven different recipes I found online. I made this for just Dave and myself. I had one serving for dinner, Dave had two. Then we had some leftovers for lunch the next day. I would say it serves four if you aren’t feeding really hungry men.

Here’s my recipe for dak galbi! Continue reading →

Dining on Dak Galbi – Stateside

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What’s my favorite Korean dish? Dak galbi. Dak galbi. DAK GALBI! 

Yes, I might be a little over enthusiastic, but it’s seriously delicious. If you haven’t tried it, then you can’t judge. I love the occasional daeji galbi, but I consider that a once every two weeks kind of dish. Bulgogi is fantastic also, but doesn’t possess that special something that entices and excites me like dak galbi does. It’s a little more run-of-the-mill. Now dak galbi on the other hand, is just down right delicious, exciting and addictive. Continue reading →

The Infamous Mushroom Soup Restaurant

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Neither Dave nor I are huge mushroom fans, so when we first arrived in Korea and were told that directly across the street from our apartment is an incredibly famous mushroom soup restaurant, we weren’t overcome with excitement. We watched the restaurant fill up night after night from our living room window. We weren’t gung-ho about giving it a try because of our lack of enthusiasm for mushrooms, but everyone raved about it so much and it was so close that we had to try it. Now it’s one of our favorite restaurants and staple foods in Korea. Continue reading →

Making Hoddeok (Stuffed Pancakes)

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Hoddeok is one of the tastiest things I’ve had in Korea. This stuffed pancake is a great street-food to eat on a cold winter’s day. The dough can be sweet or savory and the filling is made from brown sugar and nuts. Beware fellow girls with long out-of-control hair: ONLY EAT HODDEOK IF YOUR HAIR IS UP! The filling tends to ooze out and before you know it, you will have hardened sugar clumps in your hair if you don’t pull it back. It happened to me on multiple occasions; don’t let it happen to you!

While Dave and I were grocery shopping a couple weeks ago, we came across a hoddeok mix. I was ecstatic because we love hoddeok and thought it would be nice to make it whenever we get a craving. Continue reading →