Thing Fifty-Nine: Dolsot Bibimbap
Nov. 2nd, 2014 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badseed1980This is something I've done twice now. I love learning to use a new piece of kitchen equipment. A little while ago, I bought two dolsots--Korean stone bowls--for making dolsot bibimbap. This is a variation on a simple Korean dish that is absolutely delicious, satisfying, and more than the sum of its parts. Basically, it's a bowl of rice topped with various cooked, raw, and pickled vegetables and often some bulgogi meat (sweet-salty marinated beef, grilled or stir-fried). The food is hot, and you crack a raw egg on top and stir it in so that the hot food cooks it. You usually use gochujang, the sweet-spicy pepper paste, as a condiment. With dolsot bibimbap, the dish is assembled in an oiled stone bowl set over a burner on low heat, and the rice cooks against the bowl to form a crunchy crust that you scrape up and mix into the bowl. It's amazing on a cold night. I've had it in restaurants a number of times, but now, with my own dolsots, I can make it at home! This means I can also use brown rice instead of white, adding a little extra fiber to my meal.
The first time I made it, I "cheated," and got a bunch of prepared vegetables specifically for bibimbap from the Korean grocery. Hey, it worked! This time, I prepared the veggies myself, using a combination of stuff I already had. I rehydrated some dried shiitakes, sliced them, and cooked them with a little sesame oil. I grated some carrots (too lazy to matchstick them), and cooked them briefly with some sesame oil and rice vinegar. I also cooked some kale with garlic, instead of the usual spinach, because it's what was in the fridge. I had marinated some sliced round steak in the bulgogi marinade I'd bought, and cooked that up as well.
The end result was delicious, full of contrasting flavors and textures, and awesome on a crappy cold wet night like last night.
The first time I made it, I "cheated," and got a bunch of prepared vegetables specifically for bibimbap from the Korean grocery. Hey, it worked! This time, I prepared the veggies myself, using a combination of stuff I already had. I rehydrated some dried shiitakes, sliced them, and cooked them with a little sesame oil. I grated some carrots (too lazy to matchstick them), and cooked them briefly with some sesame oil and rice vinegar. I also cooked some kale with garlic, instead of the usual spinach, because it's what was in the fridge. I had marinated some sliced round steak in the bulgogi marinade I'd bought, and cooked that up as well.
The end result was delicious, full of contrasting flavors and textures, and awesome on a crappy cold wet night like last night.
