First attempt at Korean food

The cooking has definitely decreased since I've been working.  I don't have the time to search for new recipes and new ideas so I've been making a lot of stuff that I've posted before so that explains the lack of posts.  Every now and then, though, I feel the need to make something new again and that's where this came from.

I decided to make Bibimbap.  It's basically a Korean rice bowl.  I got the idea for this in Bon Appetit magazine...I think.  It may have been Food and Wine.  Either way, it was from a magazine and it sounded good.  This was my first attempt at making Korean so I was a little worried it wouldn't go so well but everything sounded easy enough so I went for it.

This dish had a lot of components so it was a little time consuming but everything was really simple.  The ingredients were:

egg

rice

spinach

steak

carrots

zucchini

mushrooms

gochuchang 

medjool dates

sriracha

sesame oil

brown sugar

soy sauce

lime juice

So to start, I cut the steak into strips and marinaded it in a mix of brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and lime.  This sat for about 4 hours.  Since they were cut smaller, they took in the flavor much faster than if I had used whole steaks.  

About 30 minutes before dinner time, I started prepping everything else.  The "fixin's" can be made ahead of time and either eaten at room temp or reheated.  Rice went into a pot with some water until done.  I julienned the carrots and zucchini and then cooked them with some sesame oil, salt, and pepper.  The mushrooms went into a pot with some soy sauce, brown sugar, and sesame oil.  The sugar mix was cooked down until thickened and formed a glaze type consistency.  Then, I sprinkled some sesame seeds on them and mixed it all together.  The spinach was cooked with oil until wilted and then sprinkled with salt.  To make gochuchang paste, I bought some pre-made paste.  I chopped and pitted the dates and then they went into a food processor with the paste and sriracha until it was all combined. The steak was cooked in the pan with the marinade and right before serving, I fried the eggs.

This meal was really good! There's rice underneath all of those toppings.  We cracked the egg and let it run all over and then mixed the whole thing up.  It's definitely a lot prettier before the mixing happens.  The gochuchang paste had just the right amount of heat.