The Meatwave

Oh Korean barbecue, is there no wrapper this stuff doesn't taste great in? I've had Korean barbecue stuffed in lettuce, steamed buns, tacos, nachos, quesadillas, dumplings, and more and it always tastes right at home. Well, I have another deliver method to share with you today that's just as delicious, and even more impressive—rice burgers!

I love some beef bulgogi, but for me, spicy pork bulgogi will always have my heart. Whenever I'm out with my friends, I make us order an extra plate of this stuff because no Korean barbecue experience feels complete to me until I've had some grilled pork shoulder that's been soaked in a complex gochujang-based marinade prior to cooking.

I keep making this over and over again, and this exact marinade has now been featured in three recipes on my blog and counting. When something is so simple and tastes so incredibly good, it's hard not to keep coming back to it, so while this now marks my fourth identical spicy bulgogi recipe, you're bound to keep seeing it repeated going forward.

What makes this recipe different from the others is how it's served, and that's on "buns" made out of rice. When first considering this idea, I assumed these buns would have been constructed out of glutinous rice, but most recipes I saw for them actually just used jasmine or sushi rice. I planned on utilizing the grill to get some crispness on the finished rice buns and worried those other types of rice would end up falling apart in that scenario, so stuck to glutinous rice based on good results from past experience. To start off the rice, I first washed it and then soaked in water overnight.

During the soaking downtime, I put together a couple sauces to top the final "burgers" with. The first I made is a recipe from Momofuku for a ginger-scallion sauce. The sharpness of the ginger and oniony scallions add instant immense flavor to anything you use it on, so it seemed like a no-brainer to pair with the bulgogi. I also made another gochujang-heavy spicy sauce, but since the pork already has those flavors in it, I think it's non-essential and it's not in the final recipe to keep things manageable, but if you don't mind a little extra work like I do, feel free to whip of up a batch to add an extra kick to the burgers.

Unlike most rice preparations, sticky rice needs to be steamed. To do this, I lined a steamer basket with cheesecloth, poured in the soaked rice, and then folded the top of the cloth over the rice so it was completed incased. I then let it steam for fifteen minutes, flipped the entire rice cake over, and steamed for another fifteen minutes until it was done.

Forming the buns ended up posing more of a challenge than I was expecting. At first I was breaking off a chunk of rice and trying to form it into a patty shape using my hands like I would do when making burgers. My hands were getting super sticky though and I couldn't get the shape right. So I switched to using a mold—a biscuit cutter to be exact. I set a biscuit cutter on a parchment-lined baking sheet and added some rice in. I then pushed down on the rice until it filled the mold and was of even thickness. This ended up being much easier and gave me consistent results.

Now onto the grilling portion of the recipe, which started with a very hot, direct fire and quickly cooking up the marinated pork. With such thin slices of meat, you'd think they'd be easily lost between the grates, but I've found just putting a big mass of the stuff together on grill, and continually flipping it, cooks it up evenly with great browning and little to no loss of meat to the fire.

Once the bulgogi was done, I moved it to a platter and placed the rice buns on the grill. I let them sit until the first side began feeling a bit dry and crispy. I then flipped the rice cakes over and brushed the top with a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds—flavors I thought would compliment the spicy pork well. After the second side was a little dry and crispy too, I removed the buns from the grill and assembled the final burgers.

Korean barbecue by any other name is just as incredible! Yup, I called these "burgers" in the end, but they were really just another amazing Korean barbecue delivery vehicle. The rice buns may just one-up some of the more prolific methods like tacos though—they added a really unique texture that consisted of a bit of crunch, a lot of chew, and more flavor than you'd expect thanks to that soy-based brushing applied at the end. Combine that with the super flavorful and nicely spicy pork, crisp and fresh lettuce, sharp and tangy scallion sauce, and a little extra heat from the spicy sauce, and I don't think you need me telling you again these were immensely awesome in so many ways. Hope you're not tiring of my Korean barbecue creations yet though, because I have at least one more idea in store for 2019—beef bulgogi cheesesteaks!

Published on Thu May 2, 2019 by Joshua Bousel

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