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I'm a fan of Korean Barbeque.
So I was at a Korean market in Garden Grove CA, when I saw the
marinated meats, and I got two pounds of Bulgogi, which in this
case was pork sliced and marinated in soysauce, pear, apple,
honeydew melon, sugar, onion, garlic, ginger, scallion, oyster sauce,
salt, black pepper, sesame, sesame oil. It has an intense red color
and lots of thick juice. But it doesn't come with any instructions.
I guess you're just supposed to know what to do with it.
When I've had it at restaurants, they've brought it out for me to
cook at my table (two or more sharing the table) on a barbecue
grill that's in the middle of the table. But I don't have one of those
at home. So I tried to do it in a frying pan, and it was not the same.
Apparently you need to let the thick juices drip down into the
barbecue and burn on the rocks or whatever element there is down
there, which provides the smoky fumes that give the meat that
special flavor. Because with a frying pan, the juices don't get hot
enough to impart the flavor, and you end up eating the cooked
juices with the meat, except for the part that adheres to the pan,
and there is a LOT of that!
So I'd recommend a real barbecue for this. But it can't be an
American style barbecue with the wires an inch apart, or even a
half-inch apart. The Korean style barbecues have a sheet metal
grill with thin slits that are less than 1/4" wide, so that the meat
strips don't fall through into the "fire". There are companies that
sell table cooking BBQ grills, and they are not cheap. Apparently
there are very restrictive laws for installing one indoors in CA,
involving permanent table location and permanent ceiling
hood/vent above it. A local restaurant remodeled, and everything
inside was changed except for one thing: the locations of the
tables with the cooking grill feature! They had new tables but they
were in the same place, under the vent hoods.
P.S. Kimchee is essential: BokChoi cabbage, red pepper, some kind
of dried salted shellfish (clam, shrimp, squid, etc.), water, radish,
ginger, fish sauce, onion powder, garlic, salt. Fermented. If
someone uses too much of the juice, you can add water and the
other ingredients (not cabbage) to replace the missing juice. But
don't forget the dried salted shrimp! One of the more challenging
ingredients is the ground red pepper, because if you use chili powder,
it has other stuff that isn't proper to KimChee, like paprika, oregano
and cuмin.