Bibimbap — The Bowl That Made Me Cry in My Car (In the Best Way)

I went into the Korean restaurant. I went in. I'm going to record that fact plainly because it took me three weeks of standing outside like a person casing a building, and the actual act of opening the door and walking through it was both the easiest and the hardest thing I've done in months.

The place is called Hodori, which I later learned means "tiger" in Korean, and it's small — eight tables, fluorescent lighting, a TV on the wall playing a Korean drama with no subtitles. The woman who seated me was in her sixties, brisk and efficient, and she spoke to me in Korean first, the way everyone Korean speaks to me first, because I look Korean, because I am Korean, because the fact that I don't speak Korean is invisible on my face. I said, "Sorry, English," and she nodded without judgment and handed me a laminated menu with photos of every dish, which I was grateful for because the Korean text was decorative rather than informational, as far as I was concerned.

I ordered bibimbap. It seemed safe — I'd seen it made on YouTube, rice with vegetables and meat and egg and gochujang, mixed together. It arrived in a stone bowl, sizzling, the rice crisping against the hot stone, and it was beautiful. I don't use that word about food often — beautiful — but this was: the colors arranged like a mandala, each vegetable in its own section, the egg sunny-side up in the center, the gochujang a vivid red stripe across the top. I mixed it all together the way the YouTube videos showed me, scraping the crispy rice from the bottom, and I ate it.

It was extraordinary. Not just the flavor, though the flavor was — hot, savory, nutty, sweet, the gochujang tying everything together with a slow burn — but the experience of eating Korean food in a Korean restaurant surrounded by Korean people speaking Korean, the TV playing Korean, the kitchen producing Korean, and me sitting in the middle of all of it, Korean and not-Korean, inside and outside, belonging and not. I ate every grain of rice. I scraped the bowl.

When the woman brought the check, she said something in Korean — just a sentence or two — and I smiled and nodded, my default when Korean is spoken at me, the polite deflection of a person who doesn't understand the language that should be her mother tongue. She patted my shoulder. I don't know why. Maybe she could tell. Maybe there's something visible about the kind of longing I carry, something that a Korean grandmother can see that nobody else can. Or maybe she pats everyone's shoulder. Either way, I cried in my car afterward. Not a lot. Just enough.

The rest of the week was normal. Work — a sprint review, a design doc for a new feature, lunch at my desk. I've been eating better since the rice cooker arrived, packing lunch instead of buying Chipotle. This week: rice with leftover stir-fry vegetables on Monday, rice with kimchi and egg on Tuesday and Thursday, and a failed attempt at making bulgogi on Wednesday that resulted in meat that was simultaneously burnt on the outside and raw in the middle, a feat of thermodynamic confusion that I'm choosing to see as educational rather than demoralizing.

The bulgogi failure sent me down a research spiral. I spent two hours Wednesday night reading about Korean cooking techniques — the importance of cutting meat thinly, of marinating properly (soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, pear juice — pear juice! — for tenderness), of getting the pan screaming hot before the meat goes in. I took notes. In a text file. Because I'm a person who takes notes on cooking in a text file, organized by category, with bullet points and sub-bullets, and if that's not the most on-brand thing I've ever done, I don't know what is.

Karen called Sunday. I told her I went to a Korean restaurant. There was a pause — shorter this time, but I heard it. Then she said, "That's wonderful, honey. What did you have?" I described the bibimbap and she said, "That sounds colorful," which is the kind of thing you say when you don't know what else to say, when your adopted Korean daughter is eating Korean food and you're not sure if that's a step toward something or away from you. It's not away from you, Mom. I wanted to say that. It's not away from you. It's toward me. Those aren't the same direction. But I didn't say it because I don't have the language yet — not Korean, not English, not any language — for the thing I'm trying to say.

Next week I'm going back to Hodori. I'm going to try the kimchi jjigae. I've read about it — a stew made with kimchi and pork and tofu, eaten with rice, the kind of everyday Korean food that every Korean person grows up eating. The kind of food my birth mother probably makes. The kind of food I should have grown up eating but didn't. I'm going to eat it and I'm probably going to cry again, and that's okay. I'm learning that crying in cars after eating Korean food is just part of my process, and processes can be iterated on, but first they have to exist.

This week’s recipe isn’t kimchi jjigae — that’s next week’s promise to myself — but it’s the dish that started all of this, the one I ordered without knowing what I was doing, the one that made me cry in my car: bibimbap. I wanted to try making it at home because there’s a difference between eating something and making something, and I’m trying to move toward, not just sit across from. Here’s how I made it.

Bibimbap (Korean Mixed Rice Bowl)

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 2 cups short-grain white rice, cooked (about 1 cup dry)
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil, divided, plus more for the pan
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil, divided
• Salt to taste

• Spinach: 3 oz fresh baby spinach
• Carrots: 1 medium carrot, julienned
• Zucchini: 1 small zucchini, julienned
• Shiitake mushrooms: 4 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, sliced thin
• Bean sprouts: 1 cup fresh bean sprouts

• Beef: 6 oz ground beef or thinly sliced ribeye
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons gochujang
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil (for gochujang sauce)
• 1 teaspoon sugar (for gochujang sauce)
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar (for gochujang sauce)
• 1 teaspoon water (for gochujang sauce)
• Sesame seeds, for garnish

Instructions

1. Cook the rice. Rinse rice until water runs clear. Cook according to package directions or in a rice cooker. Keep warm. If you want crispy bottom rice (the best part), press cooked rice into a lightly oiled non-stick skillet over medium heat for 5–7 minutes without stirring until a crust forms on the bottom.
2. Make the gochujang sauce. Whisk together gochujang, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon sugar, rice vinegar, and water in a small bowl until smooth. Set aside. Taste and adjust heat to your preference.
3. Season and cook the beef. Combine beef with soy sauce, sugar, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, and garlic. Mix well and marinate 10 minutes if time allows. Cook in a hot skillet over medium-high heat, breaking up if using ground beef, until cooked through and slightly caramelized, about 4–5 minutes. Set aside.
4. Cook each vegetable separately. This is important — each one gets its own moment. In a lightly oiled skillet over medium-high heat: sauté carrots 2 minutes, season with a pinch of salt. Sauté zucchini 2 minutes, season with salt. Sauté mushrooms 3 minutes until tender and golden. Blanch bean sprouts in boiling salted water 1 minute, drain, toss with a few drops of sesame oil. Wilt spinach in a dry pan 1 minute, squeeze out moisture, toss with sesame oil and a pinch of salt.
5. Fry the eggs. In a small non-stick pan over medium-low heat, fry eggs sunny-side up until whites are set but yolks are still runny, about 3 minutes. Season lightly with salt.
6. Assemble the bowls. Divide rice between two bowls. Arrange each vegetable in its own section around the bowl — spinach, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, bean sprouts. Add the beef. Place one fried egg in the center. Add a stripe or dollop of gochujang sauce across the top. Finish with sesame seeds.
7. Mix and eat. Break the yolk, mix everything together from the center out, scraping up any crispy rice from the bottom. The gochujang will distribute and coat everything in a slow, savory heat. Eat immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 620 | Protein: 32g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 74g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 890mg