Korean Bibimbap with Chicken Bulgogi
Bibimbap or bi bim bap means mixed rice. It consists of a variety of sauteed, seasoned veg and meat served on a bed of rice, topped with a fried egg, and accompanied by some hot chilli pepper sauce (gochujang). It's delicious!
Servings: 4 portion
Ingredients
For chicken bulgogi
- 500 grams boneless chicken
- 3 tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 (medium size) pear
- 4 - 5 cloves garlic
- 1 inch ginger
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- to taste salt
- to taste pepper
For sauteing
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds
- to taste salt
- 200 grams spinach
- 2 medium carrots
- 200 grams mushrooms
- 4 cloves garlic
Other ingredients
- 4 cups (cooked) rice
- 4 eggs one for each serving
Bibimbap sauce
- 2 tablespoons red chilli pepper paste
- 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon crushed dry chillies
- 2 tablespoons water
Instructions
- Clean and cut the chicken to small bite size slices, and place in a mixing bowl.
- Finely chop/grate pear, ginger, and garlic, and add to the bowl. Also add 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, salt, pepper and mix well. Cover with a cling film, and marinate in refrigerator for an hour.
- Wash the veggie. Finely slice the carrots and mushrooms.
- Boil some water in a pot, toss the spinach leaves in, and cook them for a minute.
- Take them out, drain off all the water.
- Heat a skillet, add 2 tablespoons oil (any vegetable oil), one tablespoon sesame oil, and one tablespoon soy sauce. Mix well, and fry sesame seeds in this mix. Scoop out 2/3 of this mix, and keep it aside. We'll use this to cook our chicken.
- Add the drained spinach to the skillet, add salt, and saute for a minute. Remove the spinach, and keep it aside.
- Now add mushrooms to the skillet, add salt, and cook on a medium flame. Once it's cooked, transfer to a bowl.
- Now stir fry the julienned carrots, and transfer to a bowl.
- Take out the marinated chicken from the refrigerator. We'll cook this chicken in three batches. Add 1/3rd of the sesame oil mix that we had kept aside to the skillet. When the skillet is hot, add 1/3rd of the marinated chicken, and cook on a high flame. Turn over occasionally, and cook for about 3 minutes. Transfer the cooked chicken to a bowl, and repeat the process twice for the remaining chicken.
- The last step of cooking is to fry the eggs. Add some oil to the pan (if required), and fry the eggs. Take care not to overcook the eggs. The yoke should be runny when cut - that is the consistency that we are looking for. We have all the ingredients ready to assemble the bibimbap.
- In a serving bowl, add a cup of rice, and top it up with equal portions of chicken, spinach, mushrooms and carrots. Place a fried egg on the top. Repeat this for all serving bowls. Mix all ingredients mentioned in the bibimbap sauce section, and serve as the accompanying sauce. Since I couldn't source gochujang, I used a Thai red chilli paste. Though it's different from the Korean fermented version, it tasted great, and went well with the bibimbap!
