Recipe: Sauce for kalbi-esque short ribs

[coraa]

Dinner tonight was kalbi (which Wikipedia tells me is also also called galbi), or Korean short ribs, with sauteed bell peppers and rice. I'm not going to give you a recipe for the short ribs, because I wasn't that happy with how they came out (tough; I cooked the wrong). And I'm not going to give you a recipe for the sauteed peppers, because I just chucked a bag of frozen peppers and onions into a sautee pan. And the rice came from a rice cooker, so, tasty, but not through any fault of my own.

But I really like how the sauce came out, so I'll share that. While it's intended for use with short ribs, I think it would be delicious on any kind of meat, or tofu, or just as a sauce for vegetables or stir fry. It's just plain tasty, as a sauce--spicy, tart, salty, sweet, and savory (not to mention garlicky!), in an excellent balance.

Ob!Disclaimer: While this sauce was inspired by the sauce/marinade that comes with/on kalbi, I make no pretense toward it being authentic in any fashion.



Sauce/Marinade for Kalbi

To make a cup, ish, of sauce:

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 6 cloves garlic
• 2 inch chunk fresh ginger
• 2 tbsp dark sesame oil (that is, the deep brown kind meant for flavoring, not the blonde kind meant for frying/sauteeing)
• 6 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp hot chile sauce (I like Sriracha), to taste
• 3 scallions, finely chopped
• 1 tsp cornstarch (optional; see recipe)
• 2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Put the soy sauce in a medium bowl.

Finely mince the garlic, or crush it in a garlic press. Add to the bowl.

Grate the ginger on a rasp/microplane grater, or peel it and puree it in a food processor, or really go to town on it with a knife until it's pastelike. Add to the bowl.

Stir sesame oil, sugar, and vinegar into the bowl. Stir well. Add the chile sauce, stir, taste, and adjust depending on how hot you like it.

Mince scallions, separating white from green part. Stir white into the bowl. Set greens aside.

You will now have about a cup of the sauce/marinade. You can use it to marinate beef/pork/chicken/tofu/seitan/whatever (after which you cook it as usual)--I usually use half of it as a marinade, and reserve the other half as a sauce. If you want to use it as a sauce, you may want to thicken it. To do so, first blend the cornstarch with a couple tablespoons of water to make a slurry. Then, in a small pan, combine the sauce and the slurry. Bring to a boil until thickened.

When you're all done, sprinkle the food with the reserved chopped scallion and the toasted sesame seeds.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Kalbi vs. galbi = two romanization systems. Pronunciation of the initial consonant falls between the two, if one's a native speaker of US English (any dialect of it I've met). Shrug.