Korean Night

Sometimes flipping through cookbooks, scouring through the internet and shortlisting what you are going to cook doesn't necessarily equate to what ends up on the dining table. Either the market/supermarket doesn't have the crucial ingredients or the ingredients got hijacked for some other dish.

Well, I did say that I was flipping my cookbooks, but it didn't turn up anything interesting. So instead, I kept my options open and see what's fresh and available from the market/supermarket.

When I got to the beef section of NTUC Fairprice Xtra @ AMK Hub, I knew right away that I am grabbing those short ribs and brisket even though I have no idea how I was going to cook them! They look so fresh and beaconing me to bring them home.

So when back to flipping my cookbooks again, I spotted something interesting in my Eating Korean and I made Grilled Beef Short Ribs (Gal-bi) and Spicy Beef Soup (Yookgaejang).

The beef short ribs was quite delicious but it was on the sweet side. My little girl was completely hooked because of this. I didn't put the ribs into a griller, but instead just cook it ala hot plate. Here's a shot of the beef grilling away. Unfortunately, I was overzealous and put alot of the meat onto the pan hence the bobbling of the juices.

Here's the end product which has some charred parts due to the honey used in the marinate.

And as for the beef brisket Spicy Beef Soup, I was quite disappointed with the recipe which calls for 16 cups of water to 1 pound of brisket. I followed the recipe but added carrots, onions and ginger for flavour but it still didn't help much in the flavour department. So I had to resort to adding a Knorr's beef cube to set things right. I think the recipe needs more tweaking and definitely has potential.

If not for the impulse buy at of the brisket and short ribs, I wouldn't think I would make these two dishes. So impulse buying some times isn't that bad, is it?

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Marinate for Grilled Beef Short Ribs (Gal-bi)

adapted from Eating Korean

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- Enough for 5 lbs beef short ribs

1 med onion, minced

1 garlic bulb, minced

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup sugar

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp sesame oil

black pepper to taste

Combine all the 7 ingredients together and stir well. Put the meat into a zip top bag and pour the marinate in. Refrigerate for at least 3 hrs or overnight.