Tried & (soon-to-be) True Recipe: Galbi Jjim

Happy Saturday!

Today was a super sweet day because this was one of the only days in the past month or so that Eugene and I were able to be at home together for the majority of the day. Usually either one of us is gone all day because of school and/or work so we rarely get to spend more than one full hour together, so today was a real treat. Most of the day was spent studying, cleaning and seeing family but it was just nice to be at home.

Today I accomplished one of my March goals: I made Galbi Jjim! (Korean Braised Beef)

I've been wanting to try this dish for a long time, but never got around to it. Last week, I asked a few sisters at my church to share their crock pot secrets/recipes, and my friend HMC shared her recipe for Galbi Jjim and I was immediately inspired! I tweaked her recipe and adapted a few others I found online, and went for it today! It was pretty good. I think I messed up with the marinade somewhere so I wouldn't suggest this recipe to anyone quite yet, but here is Galbi Jjim Recipe Round One.

I went to Ranch 99 to gather my supplies since we don't have a Korean market ANYWHERE here. (So sad!) You should've seen me in the meat line with all those loud, fearless chinese ladies. I got cut by like 5 chinese ladies and it ended up taking more than 10 minutes to get my short ribs for this recipe. I gotta learn me some chinese..The best thing about this recipe is that 1) there are not a whole lot of ingredients 2) it's in a slow cooker so you just toss it all in, turn it on, and serve. It's amazing!

First you gather your ingredients. That's gotta be the biggest portobello mushroom ever.

I chopped my vegetables, layered it in the crock pot, and threw the meat on top. I scored the meat with my fork to help it marinate more evenly. I made the marinade and poured it over to cover the meat.

5 hours of slow cooking resulted in this: Hot, steamy, juicy meat fallin' off the bones galbi jjim! A little salty and a little too much juice -- but it was pretty good!

I served it with a simple korean salad and chopped kimchi. Yum!

A few things I will do differently next time:

• I'm gonna soak the meat in water for a longer period of time to get some more of the fat off before throwing it in. There is so much fat/lard on this piece of meat, I was trying to scoop it off before serving it and the fat on my spoon solidified in minutes. Yack! 
• I might even boil the meat a little bit to get the fat off!
• I'm gonna try boiling the hard vegetables (carrots and potatoes) slightly and lay the vegetables over the meat. I put these vegetables on the bottom of my crock pot because I figured it would require the most heat to cook through, but because the marinade hung out mostly in the bottom of the pot, it made my vegetables pretty salty.
• I'm gonna try putting less marinade. After I added the marinade, I kept adding more water to try and cover all the vegetables and meat because I was afraid the meat wouldn't cook through... and then I added more soy sauce because I was afraid it would turn out too bland. And then I lost count of how much water/soysauce I was putting in there and it ended up being too salty in the end. Lesson learned! Just let it dry out a little! It'll be juicy anyway, I assure you!

I have another batch of the short ribs left so I'll try it again after a week or so!
After my clogged arteries get cleared up a bit :)

If anyone has any tips for me, please let me know!!! I'm open to suggestions... I have much to learn :)

Give thanks - a Saturday to spend with Eugene, days off to recover after a long week of work, sleeping in, quiet time to read, Cafe Roule, encouraging conversations with Tammy, reminders that our God is sovereign over ever season