[Korean] Bulgogi, Soy sauce marinated beef

This is one of the most popular Korean dish. If you make 'ssam' with it, you can enjoy this meal even better. Here's a simple recipe for delicious bulgogi.

Bulgogi (serves 2)


Ingredients [click here for details]
0.6 lb of beef sirloin
2.5 Tbsp Soy sauce
1 tsp honey
1/2 apple, minced*
2 Tbsp garlic, minced 1 Tbsp sesame seeds
1Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp sesame seed oil
a pinch of ground pepper
4~5 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 green onions, sliced into 4 segments
1/2 green pepper, sliced into long thin strips
1/3 large onions, sliced
3-4 oz white mushrooms, sliced**


*You can substitute apple with a same-size pear.
** You can use various kind of mushrooms, such as shiitake mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, or enokitake mushrooms.

Cooking Instruction

1. Slice green onions, green pepper, mushrooms, 4~5 cloves of garlic, and onions, as instructed above.

2. chop 4 cloves of garlic and 1/2 of apple finely using a chopper.

3. Slice meat thinly. It is easier to cut when it is slightly frozen.

4. Mix soy sauce, minced garlic, minced apple, honey, sugar, a pinch of pepper, sesame seeds and sesame seed oil with meat first.

5. Mix everything together in a container, and marinate overnight.

picture of meat after 1hr of marinating

6-1. After heating a pan, cook the meat and vegetables marinade with a strong fire. You can add more sugar when it's not sweet enough for you, or soy sauce for saltier taste.


If you desire, you can swollen some Korean vermicelli in the water for 10 minutes and add the vermicelli to bulgogi while cooking. Use the quarter's diameter worth of vermicelli when you grab it with your hand.


6-2.(for a bulgogi-stew), on a big pan, display more enokitake mushrooms, king oyster mushroom, and a little bit of Korean vermicelli noodles, a little bit of tofu, more vegetables, like carrots or napa cabbage. Pour 1/2 cup of beef stock and 1/2 cup of water. Bring it to boil.

How to serve

1. For ssam(click here for details)
Put bulgogi on a serving plate. 

Prepare red leaf lettuce and  pa-chae (Green onion strips with red pepper flakes)
Slice several garlic cloves and put ssamjang on a same dish.
Serve steamed rice(bop) in an individual bowl or plate, instead of dinner plates.
You can add a little bit of soy bean paste tofu stew or egg custard, samm-radish(cold sweet and sour Korean radish), kimchi.



2. For Bulgogi-stew, You can still make ssam with meat. We usually use an electric cooker (sometimes, a portable burner) to cook the stew on the middle of a serving table. You can put other various side dishes.

How to Eat
1. Ssam
Wrap a bit of all the dishes in a red leaf lettuce. For more details, click here.
Often, peopel a littel portion of Korean cold noodles after this meal.


2. For stew, you eat steamed rice, the shared Bulgogi stew, and other side dishes, alternately.
People sometimes mix the stew with bop in their personal plate.