Bibimbap

Bibimbap is the most famous Korean dish. In literal translation, it means mixed rice. You're basically mixing the rice with variety of vegetables (stir fried but sometimes with fresh vegetables) with sauce and sesame oil. It is quite healthy and delicious and I believe that's the reason why it became so popular in America especially among health conscious and trendy eaters. Few weeks ago, chef Mario from Iron Chef Show cooked Bibimbap in a stone bowl and amazed many people.

1. First, you need a carrot, zucchini, Shitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, beef, and spinach.

Sesame oil will be used for cooking these vegetables.

2. For carrots, you can either use them fresh or cooked. I heard it's better to eat them fresh because cooking destroys their vitamins. However, I decided to cook them for the taste. Personally I do not really like the taste of raw carrots but it's just me.


3. Then cook zucchinis. Use sesame oil also and just cook them for 1-2 minute until they're cooked.


4. For spinach, you want to boil them for 30 minutes to soften them up and pan fry them for another 30 seconds. You can skip the pan frying part if you want to.



5. You want to boil the bean sprouts for 30 seconds as well. Even though you could've skipped pan frying part for spinach, I recommend that you pan fry the bean sprouts with sesame oil for at least 30 seconds.


6. Ideally, you want to use Shitake mushrooms below. But because of the cost, you can substitute with other mushrooms. That's probably what I should do next time too since I spent a fortune on these mushrooms at a market. Slice them and cook with sesame oil.



7. For beef, you can use rib eye, loins, ribs, ground beef or steaks. Just make sure you slice them very thinly while it's still semi frozen. When fully defrosted, it will be hard to slice them thinly as it loses any strength of the tissues.

Use sesame oil to cook.
Then add 2 table spoons of soy sauce.
It will become similar to Bulgogi like the picture below although Bulgogi recipe is more complicated than just sesame oil and soy sauce.

8. Finally, you need to fry an egg. You can also use just the yolk for Bibimbap but I do like eating the white part as well. I cooked sunny side up in medium heat because later the yolk will be an important part of the mixing.

9. Now serving. Put rice into a bowl.

Place the fried egg over the rice.
Then pick out those vegetables that you stir fried earlier and throw them over the rice as well.

Yeah I organized them nicely for photography purpose. You can do that too if you have a guest to impress.

Now you need to make a spicy dressing which you will use to mix the rice and the vegetables. It's spicy and sour dressing called "Yangyum Jang" in Korean.

Use the red pepper paste, tea spoon of minced garlic, 2 table spoons of apple juice, tea spoon of sesame oil, Chinese hot mustard, and sesame seeds.


Put the dressing on Bibimbap and sprinkle sesame seeds over as a garnish. Enjoy!