Meat Cute
I failed to get in a Meatwave this past Spring when we had ideal temperatures and humidity, leaving each event I hosted being a competition with the heat and mugginess that plagues us for most of the summer months. So I was really excited that the cool and dry conditions of fall have finally set in and it looked like it was going to be a pretty perfect outdoor weather day for this late September cookout. Of course I wasn't the only one eager to take advantage of this and we had quite the crowd descend to take part in a feast comprised of a blending between fall favorites and Korean flavors at Meat Cute.
I got to the Korean theme a bit of a round about way. My singular goal of this cookout was to come out of it with a Thanksgiving-worthy recipe, and that search lead me to turkey meatloaf. As I was devising the recipe, I wondered, how much better would this be if it has a gochujang glaze instead of the standard ketchup one. I went with that idea, the meatloaf was great, and the rest of the menu fell into place from there.
As a hearty vegetarian counterpart to the meatloaf, I grilled up kimchi scallion pancake quesadillas. I had done Korean barbecue filled scallion pancake quesadillas before, so knew they worked out well. To make the concept friendly for non-meat eaters, I stuffed them with mozzarella cheese, vegetarian kimchi, and cilantro. A finishing squeeze of a gochujang sour cream made these really savory and filling quesadillas all the better.
I feel like I'm seeing glabi-flavored everything nowadays, and I decided to jump on that bandwagon when crafting these galbi-seasoned sliders. I mixed the primary ingredients of a galbi marinade into ground beef before forming slider-sized patties and grilling. To serve, the patties got nestled into potato buns adorned with kimchi mayo, shredded cabbage, and scallions to make a very tasty mini-burger. A good thing about this recipe was that I was able to make a veggie version too by using Impossible meat, and everything else was able to stay exactly the same.
I really dug some tteokbokki skewers I made before and will take any excuse to give them another go. That original recipe was pretty spicy, so I opted to craft one that was a bit more universally crowd-pleasing this time around and skewered the rice cakes with grilling cheese and scallions, and then the sauce I applied was a sweet, salty, and only minimally spicy soy glaze. The end result was just as delicious and another win for grilled tteokbokki.
Finally, as the primary side, I grilled up Japanese sweet potatoes, which seemed appropriate for the fall whether. Like the tteokbokki, I decided to give these a soy glaze as well, which was a great savory contrast to the sweet and creamy innards of the spuds.
Like I mentioned at the start, this was a very well attended Meatwave. So much so that between all the cooking and the large crowd, I was feel a bit overwhelmed in a way that's not usual for me now that I've been doing this for nearly twenty years. So once the last thing came off the grill, I didn't have the energy to go around and get my usual shots of all my great friends and just snapped this quick pic of about two-thirds of those in attendance. You'll also notice a screen hanging out in the background, and that's because one the sun started to set, we transitioned from cookout to movie screening, showing the rom-com/adventure Scott Pilgrim vs The World. The movie was a nice relaxing end to what was a very busy day for me, but one that I still ultimately enjoyed and was happy to be able to share with so many great people (even if I barely had time to chat with any of them).
