Yes, I know it’s actually bibimbap, but I’m Bob, so get over it. This dish usually takes me 3o minutes to prepare, but on your first time you should budget an hour. It’s sort of like a salad on rice, so you can choose which goodies to use.
- Rice (1/2-1 cup per person (pp))
- Thin cut beef sirloin (cheap steak) (a few ounces pp)
- Zucchini (1/2 cucumber sized zucchini pp)
- Carrot (1/2 pp)
- Kale or Spinach (2 stalks kale pp or 1/2 bag spinach pp)
- Radish (1 pp)
- Avocado (1/2 pp)
- Mushrooms (a few pp)
- Nori (1/2 sheet pp)
- Egg (1 pp)
- Butter (a few tablespoons)
- Soy sauce (a tablespoon)
- Vegetable oil (a few tablespoons)
- Salt (to taste)
- Korean spicy sauce Gochujang Korean chili sauce)
In advance (or first thing), I take the steak and cut it into strips about 1/2 x 1″ (doesn’t really matter, though), then put it in a tupperware, coat it in some soy sauce, and shake it a bit and let it sit to marinate for a while.
I also take a carrot and peel it, then slice it into really thin slices about 2″ long, then soak them in a container with vinegar and some salt to pickle them.
For rice, I like the new crop rice because it cooks faster and is stickier, but it doesn’t matter much. I make about 1/2 to 1 cup per person. Get this started. When it boils set it to low and leave it alone until it’s done. You’ll come back to this.
Slice up an avocado and some radish. These don’t need to be cooked, so once sliced you’re done with them.
In order to get everything to come out at the same time, it’s pretty tricky, and it’s handy to have everything chopped and ready.
Sautee the kale in butter or coconut oil sprinkled with some salt for a few minutes until it’s cooked through. Or use spinach. Doesn’t matter which. When it’s done, take it out of the pan and put it on some container for a while so you can reuse the pan.
Sautee the sliced mushrooms and thick coin-sliced zucchini in lots of butter until they’re cooked, too. You can do them together, or separated in the same pan, or in separate pans, or whatever combination you want. When it’s done, take it out of the pan.
Next you have the rice. Put a generous amount of vegetable oil (a few tablespoons) in the pan and heat it up. Then scoop all the rice into the pan and distribute it evenly across the pan. Let it sit for a while. Real bibimbap will have the rice in a hot ceramic bowl where the bowl crisps up the rice. We’re trying to emulate that, so you want to just let the rice sit. Before it burns maybe flip it or stir it up a little. It’ll be chunky and sticky, which is fine. You’re aiming for a golden brown crunchiness in part of it, not Chinese fried rice.
While the rice is going, dump the meat+soy sauce into a pan on medium high for a while. It doesn’t take long to cook. I usually go until the soy sauce starts to look like a shiny glaze on the meat. If it turns dull again you’ve gone too long.
Finally, you have the egg. Just do an egg per person over easy. Make sure it stays liquid in the yolk.
To assemble, put down a base of rice, then put whatever fixings you have (sliced avocado, sliced radish, kale/spinach, mushroom, carrot, zucchini, beef), then the egg, with some nori on top. Put the spicy Korean sauce on top, then stir it up. The egg yolk should coat everything and give you a great warm texture. The rice should have some crunch to it, but not a lot, and not all of it.