Beef bibimbap with brown rice

Author Notes

The flavour of the beef improves upon marinating, so make it ahead of time if you can. Sirloin is the ideal cut you want to use here but if it evades you, I often use minced beef. Wilted spinach, daikon, carrots, and bean sprouts are what you would typically find your bibimbap served with at a Korean restaurant. You could go down the classic route or switch them up: I sometimes use cucumber, bok choy, or other native greens in place of spinach. Beef or lamb can be subbed with salmon or tuna as can the brown rice with the more traditional sticky variety. Also, fresh or dried shiitake mushrooms are a good addition for vegetarians.

Although bibimbap is very versatile in terms of the vegetables and meats you use, the one ingredient I’d argue is absolutely indispensable here is gochujang paste. Made from fermented soybeans, chillies, salt, and usually a sweetener of some kind (which varies depending on the brand), it imparts a deep, umami flavour that cannot be reproduced with anything else. Akin to miso in terms of complexity, it’s that essential ingredient that brings the whole dish together. Gochujang is key here.

It cannot have escaped anybody’s attention that everything tastes better when it is topped with a fried egg. The egg here in question has be to runny, has to, because the yolk is what essentially makes the sauce along with the gochujang paste that coats all the vegetables and meat. Serve with little bowlfuls of banchan: kimchi of any kind and if you really want to take it up a notch, a cold glass of oksusu cha to wash it all down with.

*adapted from Gizzi Erskine —Kirthana | Theblurrylime