Bulgogi (Korean Beef Barbecue) -- One Dish at a Time

Post-birthday clarity. Something shifted when I turned twenty-three — not dramatically, not like a switch flipping, but like a lens adjusting, bringing what was blurry into sharper focus. I know what I'm doing now. I'm not just learning to cook Korean food. I'm building an identity out of ingredients, one dish at a time, and the building is deliberate and necessary and probably should involve a therapist at some point but for now involves a rice cooker and a YouTube channel and a Korean cookbook from my adoptive mother.

I cooked from the cookbook Karen gave me this week — "Korean Home Cooking" by Sohui Kim. The book is beautiful, organized by meal type rather than ingredient, and the author writes about Korean food with the kind of reverence and casualness that I aspire to: it's important and it's just dinner. I made her version of tteokbokki — spicy rice cakes — which is Korean street food, the kind of thing Korean kids eat after school, cheap and spicy and addictive. The rice cakes are cylindrical and chewy, made from rice flour, cooked in a sauce of gochujang and gochugaru and sugar and soy sauce until the sauce thickens and clings to the cakes and everything is fire-engine red and sticky and sweet-spicy in a way that makes your mouth burn and your hand reach for more at the same time.

I ate the tteokbokki standing at my counter because it was too hot to sit down with, too urgent, the kind of food that demands immediacy. It was not perfect — the sauce was a little thin, the rice cakes slightly overcooked — but it was tteokbokki, made in my kitchen, and every Korean kid I've ever read about grew up eating this after school, and I didn't, and now I am, and better late than never is a cliché but it's also a fact. Better at twenty-three than never. Better standing at a counter in Capitol Hill than not at all.

Work this week was heads-down coding — the fraud detection model is in testing phase, and I'm running simulations against historical data, looking for false positives, tuning the parameters. It's satisfying work, the kind where you lose track of time and look up and it's dark outside and you've been in flow for three hours and the code is better than it was and you are better at your job than you were this morning. I'm good at this. I don't say that often enough. I'm good at what I do.

Karen called Wednesday. She asked if I'd used the cookbook yet, with the eager hopefulness of someone who bought a gift and needs to know it landed. I told her about the tteokbokki. She said, "Is that the rice cake thing? I saw a video of that." Karen watched a video about tteokbokki. Karen, who has never voluntarily consumed Korean media, who raised me in a house without a single Korean artifact, watched a video about Korean rice cakes because her daughter is making them now and she wants to understand. I said, "Yeah, Mom, that's the one," and my voice did something I didn't intend, got soft and thick, because I am realizing that Karen is trying. She's always been trying. She just didn't know what to try until now.

Saturday: David was out golfing (his new retirement-is-approaching hobby — he's sixty-three and practicing for a life of leisure he won't know what to do with), so it was just Karen and me. She made her chicken potpie, which is a production — the pastry from scratch, the filling thick with cream and vegetables and shredded chicken — and we ate at the kitchen table and talked. Really talked. Karen asked me about the Korean cooking, not as a "thing" but as a question: "What does it mean to you?" I said, "It means I'm trying to find the parts of me that are Korean." She nodded. She said, "I'm sorry we didn't help you find them sooner." I said, "You're helping now." And she was. The cookbook. The questions. The potpie eaten at a table where Korean food now sometimes sits beside the American food. She's helping.

I went to H Mart after. Bought supplies for next week: short ribs for galbi (Korean BBQ short ribs, which I've been wanting to try), more gochugaru, a bag of sweet rice flour for tteok. The woman at the checkout spoke Korean to me and I understood one word — gamsahamnida, thank you — because I learned it on Duolingo, and I said it back, and her face brightened, and for two seconds I was a Korean woman speaking Korean in a Korean store, and then it was over and I was back to being the woman who knows one word. But I'll learn more. One word at a time. Like the food. One dish at a time.

Standing in H Mart with my bag of gochugaru and sweet rice flour, I kept thinking about that checkout moment — one word, her brightened face, and then it was over. I wanted to hold onto that feeling a little longer, so I came home and made bulgogi, a dish I’d been circling for weeks, always telling myself I wasn’t ready. Turns out one word of Korean and one act of grace from my mom were enough to make me ready. Here’s how it went.

Bulgogi (Korean Beef Barbecue)

Prep Time: 20 min + 1 hr marinating | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 1 hr 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs ribeye or sirloin, partially frozen and thinly sliced across the grain
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 Asian pear, peeled and grated (or 1/4 cup pear juice)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced, divided
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, for garnish
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable or canola), for cooking

Instructions

1. Slice the beef. For the thinnest, most even slices, freeze the beef for 25–30 minutes before cutting. Slice against the grain into pieces about 1/8 inch thick. Thinner slices mean faster cooking and better caramelization.
2. Make the marinade. In a large bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, grated pear, garlic, ginger, and black pepper until the sugar fully dissolves. The pear acts as a natural tenderizer and adds a subtle sweetness that is characteristic of classic bulgogi.
3. Marinate the beef. Add the sliced beef and two-thirds of the green onions to the bowl. Toss thoroughly to coat every piece. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or overnight for deeper flavor. Do not skip this step—the marinade is the dish.
4. Heat the pan. Set a large cast-iron skillet or grill pan over high heat until very hot, about 2 minutes. Add the neutral oil and swirl to coat. High heat is essential for getting that caramelized, slightly charred edge rather than a steamed texture.
5. Cook in batches. Add the marinated beef in a single layer, being careful not to crowd the pan. Cook undisturbed for 2 minutes, then toss and cook 1–2 minutes more until the edges are deeply caramelized and the beef is just cooked through. Work in two or three batches, letting the pan reheat between each.
6. Garnish and serve. Transfer to a platter and top with the remaining green onions and toasted sesame seeds. Serve immediately over steamed short-grain rice, alongside kimchi or any banchan you have on hand.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 375 | Protein: 33g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 11g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 810mg