Bibimbap
July 22nd, 2009 | View Comments
Bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish. I’ve never actually had authentic bibimbap (actually, I can count the number of times I’ve eaten a Korean meal on one hand), but it’s definitely on my list now!
This was much too tasty (except for the overcooked egg) to go in the Food Gone Wrong category, but it needs a little work before it’s totally right.
This is actually the second time I’ve tried it. The first time I used the recipe for Korean-Style Beef and Rice in Cooking for Two: 2009 as a jumping-off point and kind of Chinese-ized it. The food turned out good, but my husband kind of wanted bibimbap to be, y’know, Korean. This time I pretty much followed it to the letter. The food is still good, but the recipe is actually quite a lot of work despite authors’ attempts to save you time.
For example, the insistence on doing everything in one pan. This saves time during cleanup, but significantly lengthens your cooking time especially since you have to do it three times! It really is not that much extra effort to stick a second pan in the dishwasher. The plating-as-you-go technique, again designed to save you clean up time, just means that you waste a lot of time taking warm bowls out of the oven, uncovering them, adding more food, re-covering, and putting them back in the oven. If you just cooked all the toppings at once, the rice wouldn’t have a chance to get cold to begin with!
My other issue with the recipe is the proportion of the toppings. You wind up with too many pickled vegetables and too little spinach (which wilts to maybe a cupful) and beef/mushroom stir-fry. I want to adjust the amounts a little; the pickled vegetables are very vinegary and you’re just not going to eat that many in one sitting.
And while yes, this is a magazine titled Cooking for Two, I don’t actually want to cook for two. I want to cook for at least four so we don’t have to cook for the two of us every day! Just doubling the existing recipe doesn’t quite work because of the proportion problem noted above, plus the rice won’t re-heat well.
I’ll post the recipe after I tweak it some more next week.
Yvonne posted this on July 22nd, 2009 @ 1:47am in Korean | Permalink to "Bibimbap"
Likes to cook, eat, grow herbs, and collect kitchen gear in Houston, TX. 
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Looks yummy. I’m looking forward to the recipe, will definitely have to try it.