Jenny Lee's Bibimbap

Recipes

Bibimbap

By Jenny Lee

Wisconsin is where Jenny Lee started her life – La Crosse, specifically. She started her professional career as a writer. In 2008, Lee was living on the East Coast working for the Poughkeepsie Journal. She also started writing a food blog that reflected her growing interest in cooking. During the downtime from “working on these riveting stories about property taxes for Dutchess County,” she would search for recipes she’d cook when she went home at night.

But all that time spent hunching over a keyboard, her fingers typing away, took its toll. She ended up with a lot of discomfort in her arm and the responsibilities of her job were mounting – both of which brought her husband to make a suggestion: “Why don’t you go to culinary school? You talk about food all the time.” So before long, Lee had quit her job and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. No longer typing endlessly, her carpal tunnel went away and equally important, she was happy. She thought she might work for a food journalism magazine and got an unpaid internship at Saveur magazine in the test kitchen. Thinking she needed to “get better at my craft,” she switched to working in restaurants – run by world-renowned chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Tom Colicchio. But when the opportunity hit for Lee and her husband to return to Wisconsin, they took it. Here, she took a cooking position at Sanford before launching Kiuda, her business offering cooking classes and pop-up dinners.

Food blogging. Cooking at home. Cooking in restaurants. All shape-makers. And then, there’s the cooking that starts and fans the flame. That’s something else. When Lee was a kid, her mom made bibimbap, a Korean rice dish topped with meat, vegetables and a spicy sauce – all things pretty much every Korean family would have already made and ready to mix. It’s like a clean-out-the-fridge dish, an easy meal. But let’s say you don’t have all these things made up ahead of time. Lee walks you through all the steps for making bibimbap from scratch, along with permission to mix it up – with different veg and meat – as you see fit.

Most Koreans don’t make bibimbap from scratch. We use this dish to clean out the meat and vegetables from the fridge. We usually make bulgogi (Korean beef) and banchan (Korean vegetable side dishes). Then we use the leftovers to make bibimbap. This recipe gives you four portions of Korean beef to use for Bibimbap and then have leftovers.

The goal is to have five colors of red, yellow, green, black and white. Koreans like to have five flavors sweet, hot, sour, salty and bitter. Once you make bibimbap, you’ll be able to see how you can easily make it with leftover cooked chicken, salad, broccoli and carrots

Ingredients

Serves 4

Bulgogi (Korean beef):

Meaning: Fire meat. Bul [bull] means fire. Gogi [goh-gui] means meat.

1 1/2 pounds beef (use flank or top sirloin, or ribeye if you want to splurge)

1/4 cup peeled Asian pear or Bosc pear

4 garlic cloves, peeled

2 teaspoons peeled ginger, finely chopped or grated

1/4 cup regular or gluten-free soy sauce

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon sesame seeds for garnish

2-4 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 cups cooked rice, for serving

Bibimbap:

Meaning: “mixed rice.”

8 ounces of bulgogi, already cooked

2 quarts water

2 tablespoons fine salt or 1/4 cup kosher salt

8 ounces spinach

4 tablespoons soy sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks

12 fresh shiitake mushrooms

2 small zucchini, cut into quarter-inch thick rounds, or 1 large zucchini, halved and cut into half-moons

2 leaves green or red leaf lettuce, sliced crosswise, about 1 centimeter thick

1 red bell pepper, cut into strips

6 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon grated or minced ginger for carrots

1/2 teaspoon grated or minced ginger for zucchini

1/2 teaspoon grated or minced ginger for shiitake mushrooms

4 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more if needed

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil for spinach

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil for carrots

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil for zucchini

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil for shiitake mushrooms

1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds for spinach, plus more sesame seeds for garnish

4 eggs

4 cups cooked rice

Spicy Sauce:

1/2 cup gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)

2 teaspoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons honey or brown sugar

Mix gochujang, sesame oil and honey to make the sauce. Set it aside.

Instructions

Bulgogi (Korean beef)

How to slice beef thin:

Wrap the beef in plastic wrap. Freeze it in the deepest part of your freezer for at least two hours. Take out the beef. Unwrap the plastic. The beef should be firm enough for you to slice it thin, but not a block of ice. Look at the lines in the meat, which is the grain of the meat. Place your knife perpendicular to the line, making a cross. That’s called cutting against the grain. Slice the meat thin. Cutting across the grain makes the meat tender. Skip the freezing step if you’re in a hurry and just slice the beef as thin as you can (still cutting against the grain).

How to make the marinade:

Peel and core the Asian pear. Rough-chop a portion of Asian pear to measure 1/2 cup. Then slice the pear for dessert later. Peel the garlic cloves and rough-chop them. Peel the ginger and finely chop to measure 2 teaspoons. Throw the garlic, ginger, pear, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil in the blender. Puree until smooth.

Pour the marinade over the meat in a container and cover. Marinate for one hour if in a hurry, but the flavor will not be as deep. Ideally, you should marinate for three to four hours and up to 24 hours. Scheduling-wise, you can marinate the night before cooking.

Heat a nonstick pan on high. Add 1-2 tablespoons of oil to the pan. The pan is hot and ready when the oil begins to shimmer. Add the beef to the pan. Let sit for 1-2 minutes to brown. Then flip the meat over. Cook until the beef is cooked through. Cook in batches of two, adding oil as needed, if you can’t fit all the beef in the pan. If you’re not sure if the beef is done, taste a piece. Does it taste cooked through? Alternatively, you can grill the beef. Take the meat out of the pan and place on a serving plate. Garnish with sesame seeds. Serve with rice.

Bibimbap

Vegetables:

Pour 2 quarts of water into a pot. Wait for the water to come to a boil. Add salt to your boiling water. Drop the spinach in the water. Cook for 30 seconds. Pour the spinach and water into a strainer in the sink. Run cold water over the spinach. Once the spinach is cold, squeeze the water out and put the spinach in a bowl. To the spinach, add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of sesame seeds and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Set aside in a bowl.

Pour 1 to 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil into a 10-inch pan, the heat set to high. Watch for the oil to shimmer. Add the carrots. Season with salt and pepper. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Cook to soften, but make sure it still has a slight crunch. Set aside in a bowl.

Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil to the pan, and set the burner to high heat. Watch for the oil to shimmer. Now add the zucchini, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Set aside zucchini in a bowl.

Snap the stems off the mushrooms. Keep and freeze the stems for stock or discard them. Slice the mushrooms thin. Add another tablespoon of vegetable oil to the pan. Add the mushrooms. Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper. Sauté for one to two minutes. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Cook for another minute. Put into a bowl and set aside.

Slice the lettuce leaves crosswise into 1-centimeter-wide strips and set aside.

Assemble Bibimbap:

To reheat bulgogi beef, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil to a hot pan and reheat bulgogi until the beef feels hot to the touch. (If you're in a hurry, reheat bulgogi in the microwave.) Before plating, line up your vegetables in their various bowls. Cook the eggs sunny side up or over-easy. To serve bibimbap, place 1 cup of rice in the center of each of the four large bowls. Like the hands of a clock, place a fourth of the bulgogi and each of the vegetables around the egg yolk. Sprinkle the dish with sesame seeds. Serve with sauce on the side. Spoon the sauce in a rice bowl and mix. Enjoy your mixed rice bowl.

Note: If you have leftover bulgogi or other meat and vegetables, you can make a rice bowl anytime. Cook the rice and make the sauce. You have an easy dinner. Feel free to switch out other vegetables in the ingredient list.

Bio

Chef Jenny Lee is the owner of Kiuda, a pop-up restaurant serving Korean-American food in the Milwaukee area. The word Kiuda means nourish in Korean. The word also means to take care of kids, pets or plants. Lee cooked for James Beard award-winning chefs Justin Aprahamian of Sanford in Milwaukee, as well as Tom Colicchio and Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York City. Lee also teaches Korean cooking classes at recreation departments, the Milwaukee Public Market and privately in people's homes.

Jenny Lee

Kiuda

Jenny Lee

Kiuda

About Kiuda

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