Dwehji-Gogi - Korean BBQ Pork

Korean food seems to be a big theme on this blog. Perhaps it's because nearly half of us spent at least one year on that little peninsula. The two most popular dishes...at least for Americans, I guess, are bulgogi and dwehji-gogi. Bulgogi is most popular because it's just tasty, dwehji-gogi comes in second because, depending on where you get it, it can practically burn your tongue off with it's spiciness.

We are going to address dwehji-gogi today. Because it's yummy and you must try it. It's required. While you're at it head out to an Asian food store and snag some kimchi and some o-jing-o (seasoned shredded squid) and you'll have yourself a truly authentic and delicious Korean meal. You won't regret it. I promise.

This recipe comes directly from A Korean Mother's Cooking Notes.

Ingredients

1 pound of pork (use a pork roast and not a tenderloin as the tenderloin is too lean)
2 T soy sauce

2 T red pepper powder or paste

2 T wine

3 T sugar

1 T sesame oil

1 T sesame salt

2 T chopped green onion

1 t chopped garlic

1 t chopped ginger

1/4 t black pepper

1. Slice the pork into thin strips, no thicker than 1/4 inch.

2. Mix all the other ingredients together.

3. Combine the meat and the seasoning sauce and make sure that every piece of meat is well covered with the seasoning.

4. Broil or pan-fry.

Now a few words. As is always the case, I did not use this exact recipe...because I'm a rebel like that. I have lots of daughters who are sort of wimpy and can't handle the spice so instead of 2 tablespoons of red pepper powder, I put in only 1/2 a tablespoon in one half of the seasoning and then 2 tablespoons in the other half, for Del and I. I also put in less sugar and slightly more soy sauce and more garlic, because garlic is really good. Also, I just put in sesame seeds and not sesame salt, because I'm too lazy to make sesame salt (recipe follows). My point is that the above recipe is a good skeleton. You can adjust it to your own taste and use ingredients you have on hand (ground ginger instead of fresh, etc). The only two ingredients that can't really be replace with some sort of equivalent are soy sauce and sesame oil. When you pan-fry it, make sure to do it in small batches. You want to make sure you're sauteing the meat the whole time and if you over-crowd the pan you'll end up with a soggy mess. Of course, serve with rice and if you don't like kimchi and kim (seaweed) then just serve it with some Chinese pea pods or something like that.

Sesame Salt

-roast some sesame seeds in a pan until they are done popping or until you can easily crush them between your fingers.

-grind them up.

That's it, sesame salt. They say that they call it sesame salt to differentiate between whole sesame seeds and ground up sesame seeds and not because you add any salt to it.