Bulgogi

It sounds just like it's written:  Bull  Go  Gi

Korean barbeque, BBQ, Bar-B-Que or any which way you want to write it.

My short definition of Bulgogi is "sweet and spicy" not unlike a good Texas BBQ but with slightly different ingredients.

A Texas BBQ might rely on a tomato sauce (or not) but certainly not something like "bean curd."  What the hell is bean curd, anyway?  I didn't even know a bean had a curd.  Why you'd want bean curd in a dish that most likely is going to be served with beans is a total mystery to me.

I digress.

Thank you, Koreans, for throwing marinated meat on a grill and roasting it!  Yes, well done!  That's good stuff.

So, I started my Korean BBQ education by doing the logical thing.  Making soup.

Soup?  Well, duh, anybody can slosh sauce on meat and fire it up but if you're going to have a full meal you need sides, hence the soup.  I decided to make a shrimp soup because fresh Gulf shrimp were available and "on sale" meaning less than $20 a pound and they looked good and fresh.  Shrimp soup it was.

Here's the blueprint:

Saute shrimp with garlic and ginger, add mushrooms and beef stock and bok choy.  Why bok choy?  It sounds Korean.  Adjust seasoning with Korean BBQ sauce and bingo bango soup's on!

Here's the shrimp, garlic and ginger frying up in the pot.

Now the stock, mushrooms, bok choy and seasonings are added.  This simmers for 20 minutes or so.  At the end I added some thin rice noodles that thickened the soup a little.

It's soup!  Served with a piece of halibut marinated with Korean BBQ sauce and grilled.  The fish was served with a lettuce wrap.  Not a bad start.  Next, I'll look at making my own Korean BBQ sauces from scratch.