ILONA ANDREWS

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American “Bulgogi” and Russian Morkovcha

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Oh noes, it’s a cooking post. I promised you return to a somewhat normal blogging. Today I offer you two recipes of Korean origin. These shouldn’t be mistaken for original Korean cuisine. It’s more of American/Korean and Russian/Korean fusion, but they are yummy and cheap.

Bulgogi.

When pandemic started, I bought a bunch of chuck roast. It’s a tough cut of meat with lots of connective tissue and it’s usually cooked to death in a slow cooker or Instapot. It makes excellent pot roast, because of all of that lovely connective tissue, good stew, and decent shredded beef. It’s also cheap. Even now, witch crazy meat prices, it’s only $4 per pound.

So I bought a lot of it. Small problem – it’s summer and nobody wants to eat pot roast in 104 degree heat. Bulgogi to the rescue.

Bulgogi, which means “fire meat,” is a type of Korean barbecue. It’s thinly sliced meat that’s marinated and cooked in a hot pan or thrown on the grill. We are going to do an American inspired version of it.

First things first, start the rice cooker. 🙂

Now, we’re going to defrost the roast but not all the way. If you have a 2 pound roast, defrost it in the microwave for about 1 pound setting. If you are thawing in the refrigerator, it should still feel slightly hard when you poke it with your fingers.

Now we get a cutting board and a sharp knife, arm ourselves with patience, and slice the roast. You want to go across the grain so place the roast just like this and cut across.

You want to get as thin of a slice as you can and the meat being partially frozen helps with that. If you get some larger chunks, it’s fine too. Just aim for the thinner the better.

Now that the roast is sliced, we’re going to mix the marinade. There are a lot of versions of this marinade, some using Asian pear, etc. But we are going to aim for the cheap and simple version.

For most Asian fusion, you need 3 essential ingredients: soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil. You can fudge and substitute vinegar or sweetener, but I recommend getting these three and keeping them in stock. Most grocery stores carry them. Sometimes the recipe calls for a unique sauce or ingredient, like if you are making those little chicken skewers you find in Chinese buffets in the South, you’ll need oyster sauce or they won’t taste the same. But most of the time, these three will form the base of the marinade or sauce. I tried using other things instead of mirin, but it doesn’t turn out as well. I stick to Kikkoman brand, but your mileage may vary.

1/3 -1/2 cup of soy sauce, depending on the size of the roast

1/4 cup of mirin

1 tsp of sesame oil

2 Tbsp sugar (I keep Sweet Soy Sauce on hand, so I just splashed some in there, kind of randomly. Gordon likes the meat a little sweet.)

3 large cloves of garlic, crushed

1/4 tsp ground ginger (I used powdered and not that much, because I was aiming for Gordon’s preferences. You can put 1/2 if you like it spicier.)

A dash of black pepper

You are done. Mix everything together, pour over meat, mix, cover with something, and put into the fridge. It needs 30 minutes. You can let it marinade longer, but thirty minutes does it. I’ve had it marinade over night, and there is no difference in taste.

Morkovcha

While the meat is marinading, we are going to jump the ocean, land in Russia, and steal this carrot recipe. The legend says that Koreans in Russian tried to make kimchi and came up with this instead. It’s an acquired taste, salty, spicy, but it’s cheap to make and I was home sick.

I’m going to send you to Marina for the recipe. She is right on the money. I didn’t take a pic of mine, because I forgot and then it got eaten too fast.

Basically you peel and shred about 6 largish carrots, add garlic, vinegar, cayenne, and other spices she mentions, and mix. If you want it spicier, add more pepper. Now comes the weird part. You’re going to warm some light tasting olive oil in the wok or whatever you are planning to use for the bulgogi. She says 1/2 cup, I used less. Bring your carrot mix over to the stove. When the oil looks about to smoke, use a large cooking spoon to scoop a little bit of oil and pour it over the carrots. Mix immediately. The oil should sizzle on contact.

Do this until the carrots seem coated. I would say I did three spoon-fulls and probably about 1/3 cup of oil. Set aside. It needs at least 15-20 minutes. This is a really good winter recipe, actually, but like I said, I was emotionally beat up after Kid 2’s sickness and wanted nostalgic food.

Now we’re going to fry bulgogi. You only want to throw at most 1/2 cup of meat in the pan at a time. Stir fry over high heat. Do not walk away, it will burn. A typical roast takes me about 5-6 sets. Mine looks like this.

Serve with rice and morkovcha. Traditionally, this is also sprinkled with green onion and sesame seeds. Some recipes call for adding onion to the marinade. I don’t because a) nobody likes it and b) onion burns quicker than the meat.

Well, I am off to work on Ryder. Happy cooking.

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Comments

  1. I just bought Mirin. I was trying to make beef and broccoli. It did not come out very good. Do you have a good recipe for that?

    • Try shaoxing rice wine.

      For my beef and broccoli I do about 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp shaoxing, 1 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tbsp cornstarch. Eyeball some soy sauce (maybe around 2 tbsp? I don’t measure) and a few shakes of white pepper. Chopped fresh garlic and I have my marinade for the beef.

      I set aside some garlic to cook with the broccoli after blanching it. Do the garlic+broccoli in the wok first, and set aside. Then I cook the beef and when it’s cooked through and sticky, I add about half a cup? of water (sorry I eyeball most of this). Put the heat high, stir the sauce until it thickens, then pour it over the veg.

      I don’t cook the broccoli with the meat/sauce because it sends to get clumpy/stuck together and because I’m usually using Chinese broccoli/gai lan and the leaves get really stuck and it makes a mess.

      Good luck!

      But yeah, shaoxing rice wine is really great in Chinese style brown sauces. It gives you that little flavor that you don’t realize you’re missing in the home cooked versions. Just try not to overdo it, I always do an equal amount of sugar/wine ratio.

      • Shaoxing rice wine is a bit like sake, no? I often use it instead of sake when I cook, because it’s cheaper ^^

        In fact, rice wine + sugar = mirin, since mirin is really a sweet sake. In one translated japanese cookbook I got, the author recommends using sherry instead of the syrup mix they sell in North America. I tried it and would never go back, besides being also happy to have found a use for sherry outside of cozy English mysteries 🙂

        • YES. I use sherry and Madera for cooking wines when I need some of that sweetness without the potency of port.

    • I JUST made this via a recipe from Natashaskitchen.com/beef-and-broccoli it has a video as well. She also suggests slightly frozen meat sliced thinly against the grain. It turned out yummy first time.

  3. This recipe looks delicious and I will try to make.???? (I am smiling under the mask!)

    • Ooooo- I love paneer! This will definitely be on my menu list (along with all these other goodies you wonderful peeps are adding) LOL! That’s my weekly menu planned. Thanks guys 😉 😀

  5. Hey there 🙂

    I have a question I’d like to ask someone who actually knows Russian cooking. I’m not really all that familiar with Russian cuisine, the only thing I’ve come across is Honey cake ( Medovik) and I’m not kidding when I say that cake has haunted me for years while I’ve tried to hunt down recipes that wouldn’t take a whole day to make.

    So since you’re the only person I can think of to ask, any tips/hints/recipes you/anyone else could reccommend for Medovik?:)

    P.S. I’m willing to trade South African-Indian recipes as tribute 😉

    All my love from SA<3

  6. Looks good. Do you think broccoli would change/make this recipe worse? I will try the Morkovcha, but I just love broccoli.

    • Korean here. Born-in-Korea Korean. I’m not sure how the broccoli would affect Ilona’s recipe, but broccoli generally won’t affect Korean-style bulgogi. Bulgogi is actually usually a much lighter color than the pictures you’ll see online of the “Westernized” versions. And, you can actually cook a bunch at once. The one I’m familiar with is a lighter color and often has broccoli (and sometimes carrots) and onions added (cut large enough that you can pick around it). The meat is “stir-fried” but results in a lot of juice left over that is delicious poured over rice, and the meat ends up curled. Bulgogi is a popular catering/banquet item because: (1) it’s cheaper than kalbi but it’s still a meat, and (2) you can prepare it much quicker in large batches than kalbi. My mom always made a darker variety and her’s never curled/balled up because she pan fried them individually because she didn’t like how it looked all curled up.

      Ilona’s recipe looks easy, but even easier are the pre-made marinades (if you live near an Asian market). I would cut it with a little extra soy sauce or water because the pre-mades are sweeter than I like.

      Also, for anyone who wants to know what kind of meat is traditionally used, it’s rib eye. Thinly cut rib eye. There are also pork and chicken variations, but they use a different marinade.

  7. I’m vegetarian, but I love seeing cooking posts and seeing recipes from around the world 🙂

    • You can use the same recipe and marinate tofu or tempeh in it. Actually, Bulgogi is meant to be stir fried, so you can stir fry all kinds of vegetables in the Bulgogi marinade. This is the same thing Filipinos do for adobo. Practically any vegetable can be adobo style, but my favorite is ang choy (water spinach).

  8. My mother would cook green peppers in white vinegar and canola oil with a mix of all the usual Indian spices (turmeric, cumin, coriander, jevain) and then let it sit in a jar.

    She could eat it like candy while the rest of us would search the jar for the smallest pepper we could find ????

  10. sounds delicious can you substitute something else for garlic? I usually cook for me and my parents and my mother is deathly allergic to garlic

    • I had a look on the internet for “garlic and onion alternatives”. They are mostly for ibs, but they mention ingredients that taste somewhat similar. It could be useful.

    • If you don’t use the garlic, then that’s a teriyaki marinade. I like my meat sweet, so I’d probably adjust the sugar to taste. I also like to add a bit of ketchup (yep, another version of sugar). I am not a fan of mirin, so I use sake, but I’d reduce the amount.

      I was going to say add a little bit of hoisin sauce for a slightly different flavor, but I see garlic is an ingredient in hoisin sauce.

    • Just looking at the recipe if I took out the garlic I might be tempted to put in some fresh grated ginger or a little chopped green onion.

  13. If anyone hasn’t tried it, Tamari, a type of soy sauce, is awesome! I use San-J (but different brands make it too) and I’ve done both the regular and reduced sodium. It’s gluten free, for those that care about that. We think that it’s soooo much tastier than regular soy sauce. ????????????????????????????????????

    • I forgot to say that I love it when you post cooking things! I’ve had Bulgogi, but Morkovcha is new to me and I love trying new foods. Thank you! ????

  14. I have wondered about bulgogi since Nevada ordered it the first time. 😉
    Thanks for explaining in detail, with pictures!

  15. Since you are adding hot oil to the carrots, could you use carrots that are slightly wilted?

    I found some in the fridge and they are a bit limp for carrot sticks (our traditional go to).

    • From the queen of “buy vegetables and let them sit there until they die”, I give you the solution to wilted carrots. They’ve dried out. Soak them for a little while, they’ll be fresh again and be fine. I only use them when I make soups, but I like them nice and solid to slice into small pieces, and this does not fail me. Works on those old potatoes, too. Celery, not so much, but enough. Good luck.

      • Yes! Same with bell peppers. When I bring celery home I wash and trim it and store it in water right away and putì the fridge. Keeps it crisp and green longer and is ready to go for a quick snack.

      • What!! Why did I not know this? All those vegetables wasted :(. Thanks! I love this blog and the horde.

  16. We have made bulgogi tacos several times. I mixed the marinade from different recipes. Then I found a jar sauce at the local grocery store that has a huge ethnic selection … It was excellent. And now I want bulgogi tacos. Your carrot mix would be good on the tacos. I use pickled grated radish and cabbage on mine.

  18. Between 10-15 years ago I was doing a ton of stir-fry — we are moving in about two weeks to an apartment with a big enough kitchen that I can finally have room for a wok and a real fridge and a dedicated chopping island and… ok, I got a bit distracted there. ANYWAY, I found that 4TBSP total marinade per pound of meat, in a ziplock bag, is plenty (and also when I learned to scrape the last out of everything, because a TBSP goes a very long way!). Anything over that becomes (as it sounds here) sauce.

    I’m absolutely flagging this for the Morchovka recipe, it sounds delicious and like a great way to make my husband eat vegetables.

    • Also, I’ve always used regular rice wine or sake instead of mirin (and added hoisin sauce to your trio*). I’ll have to give mirin a try.
      ____
      *The 4 TBSP being one each of soy sauce, rice wine, hoisin, and sesame oil.

      • If using rice wine in place of Mirin it is recommended to add 1/2 tsp of sugar for every Tbsp of rice wine. Our kitchen is too small for me to buy too many exotic ingredients ????.

        Enjoy your new apartment!

        • Thank you! I’ll have to give that a try.

          I was madly sick (food poisoning) the day we were supposed to see it, so my husband went without me and argued for it (bribing me with a real fridge). I’ll see it for the first time when we get the keys tomorrow.

  19. Yum! I don’t cook very much any more – cooking for one is boring – but I still love recipes.
    Thank you for different ones.

    OBTW – Your supermarket may have carrots already shredded or julienned. I have gotten both at various times here in Houston. (Randalls – shredded, HEB – julienned) I am both lazy and arthritic…

    • I just discovered that little snacking carrots are great baked. No peeling or chopping needed. No good when boiled though, although julienned carrots are.
      Onions are easy when baked. Cut them in half, leaving the brown outer skin on. This skin gets dry and tough as it bakes, but the soft inside can be simply scooped out and put on a plate when cooked.

  20. I have been thirsting over this while watching kdramas for so long and I thought it would involve more difficult to find spices and ingredients, turns out it’s pretty similar to some of the stuff we already do at home!! I do need to try and find Mirin and try it out though. Thanks for sharing these recipes Ilona, I’ll try the morkovcha as well!

  21. I LOVE BULGOGI! I admit, I had no idea what it was until Mad Rogan ordered it in Burn for Me. I looked it up and it sounded interesting, and then my local Costco started carrying it in their pre-made meals section and I was hooked. Even my kids love it, and we have it at least twice a month. I have never tried making it myself, so this will be an adventure. Thank you for sharing! ????

  23. I comfort cook, and so far this year all the comfort foods have been made far too often. Thank you for a new option!
    Still sending good vibes and any positive karma I may have accumulated to your family in these miserable times.

    • I open the page I’m wondering about and click on edit and click on find and look for my name. If someone comments, it’ll be there. It’s a bit much to ask for the page to automatically notify you if someone responds, but it’s real easy to check for yourself. I hope that helps.

      • I do the same on my laptop: Edit, Find, my name (or a date or another person’s name). It might be different if you access the blog on your phone. On my phone (Android), I have to click on some lines at the bottom of the phone, and then I click on “Find on page” in the pop-up, then I type my name (or whatever I’m searching for).

        • Depends on which browser for Android though – in Firefox for Android it’s under the three dots in the top right corner, then “find on page” 🙂
          And yes, I do this too XD

      • I do the same. I also look for Ilona and Gordon, if it’s a story post, in case they have something more to say.

      • I subscribe to other blogs and i get notifications via email of responses. Every blog is different. No big. I’ll just check back if I remember.

  25. Korean here – my mom always pureed the marinade. She would throw in the garlic, ginger, onion, and Asian pear in the blender with the soy sauce.

  26. Bulgogi is the best!

    It’s amazing what a quick dip in marinade can do for tough meats.

  27. A slight digression: I hadn’t even started wok shopping yet, since I’ve been so excited about refrigerator shopping (the standard size fridge here in Austria is the size of my college dorm fridge — you’re expected to go grocery or market shopping 3-4 times/week, but it means for simple things like orange juice, I *must* go shopping 3-4 times/week, because I can’t use more space for OJ than would fit a single bottle. And a real freezer than could hold an entire frozen pizza has been a pipe dream).

    ANYWAY, when I went to Amazon DE and searched for “cast iron wok with handle”, one of the things returned was something I’d never seen before — a Kasan? The listing says “Kasan with Flattened Base/Grill Wok Black.” The description says (among other things) that it’s a Russian rice pot, and from the picture it LOOKS like a wok with steeper sides. It’s also running about 50€ cheaper than the next more expensive one (that will ship to Austria). Is this something similar or are the descriptions and pictures way off?

  28. I do a similar marinade for the bulgogi, but I also put in about 1 – 2 tbs of gochujang (Korean red pepper paste) for a little kick.

  29. I have a very similar bulgogi recipe from a friend, who got it from a Korean co-worker. (But given how spicy it isn’t, I suspect it’s still Americanized.) I always have the butcher slice the meat for me when I buy it, describing it as “as thin as you can get it without it literally falling apart in your hand”, and I usually use something like a rump roast because I’m not a fan of lots of fat on my meat, despite growing up on a farm where we raised and butchered our own and ate…lots of stuff I shudder to remember. My bulgogi recipe doesn’t use mirin and adds Korean wine, but since that’s hard to find, I usually use Saki instead, which still works. It also adds quite a bit of onion and sesame seeds right in the mix. It’s delicious! And yes, small batches of frying are the way to go. I tried doing it all at once one time, and it was a disaster.

  30. Thanks, looks tasty! I also appreciate the fact it’s easy on the wallet, so that’s a real win-win 🙂

  31. Love these recipes! I think I’ll just go to BevMo get larger bottle of Mirin. Groc store bottles are so small I’m afraid to use it. Round here lots of Basques and I swear the carrot recipe looks similar. But ya know everybody’s working the Rancho. Best from CAli hit spot. Sigh.

  33. I looove Korean food, kimchi is life, I will definitely try these!
    We can get a ready made Kimchi paste here (different from gochujang), I am now super curious how the morkovcha would taste with that.
    The process with hot oil poured to sizzle ontop is very interesting, I have tried it because I’ve seen Dianxi Xiaoge do it on Youtube. Now I can do it with this, thank you!

    • Hi! Russian Korean here.
      Russian Korean food is pretty different from actual Korean food. Since many of the ingredients can’t be found in Russia, we had to adapt the recipes to fit the environment and in the process make up entirely new dishes and new ways of preparing them. It’s almost 150 years of diversion from traditional Korean cuisine. For example, we throw coriander in pretty much everything, while Korea doesn’t even grow it!
      Morkovcha would taste completely different with used with traditional Korean ingredients.

  34. My sister-in-law is Korean, and my college roommate was two years in South Korea. I love bulgogi because it is versatile. I’ve used a Fuji apple when I can’t get my hands on Asian pears. Or my roommate used orange juice. I like half brown sugar with white, melts better in the sauce and gives it a deeper flavor. I like to eat by taking a green lettuce leaf putting rice, meat and any other stuffing in it and eating it like a taco or a lettuce wrap. I put go-chu-jang sauce on the side so people can heat it up to where they like. Sometimes I mix go-chu-jang with a little bit of mayo, that’s yummy too.

    • Oh, gochujang and some mayo is what a group of LDS friends of mine call missionary fry sauce! It is an excellent way to get a little more flavor onto a sandwich or a wrap that doesn’t need any sweetness or smokiness.

  35. I love the comment of, “Do not walk away, it will burn.” My husband is working from home and trying to cook for me, but he refuses to stand there and watch the food, so it isn’t what I would do with it. My mother taught me well over 50 years ago that while a watched pot never boils, a watched pan never burns the food!

    These are not recipes I will ever cook, but I have wondered just what the heck they were eating. Now I know. I’m not surprised to find recipes here today. I was shocked that you have produced Ryder to the extent you have with all that’s going on, and I prayed to send thanks that Brandi has recovered enough to let you talk about it. It’s hard to discuss things that hit you so deeply, which is why I am just now, a month after things started rolling, discussing my illness and treatment with friends I’ve had for over half a century. Cooking is always your go-to stress relief, and I’m glad you can do that. Mine has always been reading and slipping into a world built to entertain me, which you provide me well.

    May your days be filled with joy and light. Thank you for what you do.

  36. Thank you for this! Tamari, mirin, and sesame oil (plus rice wine vinegar) are staples in our pantry, plus carrots in the fridge, and this looks like a great new alternative use for them.

    Thanks for working on Ryder too. 😀

  39. We just had Bulgogi last week. My family are meataterians and will eat roast or stews in any type of weather. As long as it haa bits of meat in it.
    I will put the Morkovcha on my next menu, see if they like it. If I give them a chance we will eat the same 5 things over and over.
    I like doing quick stir fry type dishes to add some variations to what I am cooking. Beef is always a crowd pleaser.
    Thanks for sharing

  40. I’m so happy to see this recipe! I also filled our freezer with chuck roast – Winn Dixie sometimes puts it on a weekend sale, buy one and get one free. With just 2 of us, here in Central Florida in the summer, pot roast is OUT. I even have mirin that I bought for something but apparently never used. Time to dig out a package to defrost.

    Thank you!

  41. Thanks! I just tried making a marinade of teriyaki but it turned out so salty even with low sodium soy sauce. I am not even sure what I did wrong

    I will try this recipe next.

    • A, an English friend once made one of my American stirfry recipes and complained that hers was much saltier than mine. It turns out that the English use the word “tablespoon” to mean a big serving spoon, as opposed to the American meaning of soup spoon, which equals 3 teaspoons or 15 milliliters.

      One thing I do is keep regular sodium soy sauce in the refrigerator. Often, when thoroughly chilled, shaking the bottle will cause the sodium to precipitate out into a chunk at the bottom, leaving the rest much less salty. Or I just buy the low sodium stuff.

  42. Random comment about chuck roast… if you don’t want to buy a full brisket, then chuck roast is a great alternative to throw on the smoker. I use a slightly spicy brisket rub, applied the night before… then throw the roast on the smoker the next morning.. 4hrs at ~250deg. gets the roast to about 155-160 deg. Put in an aluminum tray or roasting pan, add 1cup of beef broth mixed with 1Tbs additional rub, cover with foil… crank temperature up to 300 for another 2-2.5 hrs to get the meat to up around 205. Remove from smoker, let rest for 15mins to soak juices back up… then slice thin. Way cheaper than having to buy the larger 7+ lb slabs of beef… same great brisket flavor .

  43. This sounds good. I’ll get mirin when I shop ‘Wednesday. I’m going to hope this isn’t hot or very spicy, but an inexpensive meat recipe for hot weather is right on target right now. I was saving up for some nice jewelry but had decided to buy a roast of beef instead. LOL. This will be perfect.

  44. Love you guys! We are grilling tonight. I have a new cookbook arriving today I’m excited about. It is on cooking whole foods …with the pandemic, I’ve gotten used to a set pattern with food planning and want to break out of it.

    Thank you for something to book mark for future!

  45. Thanks for the Russian recipe. Sounds like a good veggie dish. I love kimchi but I buy. Not make it. Too smelly for the house.

  46. Funny coincidence…I just put a chuck roast in the crock pot! I’m keeping this post bookmarked b/c I’m going to try that next time. I do stir fry a lot, but have never tried bulgogi. Thanks!

  47. Thank you for the post, Ilona Andrews. I have carne picata meat in freezer from winter/ spring. It’s basically pre shredded roast. It’s too hot for chili now (100 degree heat index) but your bolgotti recipe sounds tasty. Thank you for suggestion.

    If I don’t like I am sure Titan will polish off. He and I have been discussing that just because wind blew green persimmons onto ground that they are not dog friendly. Pups.

  48. A propos of nothing, I just got an email from Harper Collins that the ebook of Sapphire Flames is now on sale for $3.99. In case you were wanting to buy it and waiting for a sale.

  50. This is excellent timing! I just tried to make Bibeembap last night and it called for bulgogi beef, which I attempted to do but it turned out tough and not very flavorful. I will use your recipe the next time! Thanks for the tip. 🙂

  51. Another slicing option for the beef is to use frozen beef and a mandolin, which I am hothanded (yeah, pastry is a disaster over here), clumsy and have no knife skills so the mandolin works way better for me than trying to use a knife.

    That carrot stuff is so delicious – it is excellent to find out what it is actually named! – my dad used to make sandwiches out of pumpernickel bread, morkovcha and poached eggs. They were so good and I have never been able to recreate but now I can. Thank you so much for that.

  52. Thank you for sharing! This enhances our adventures at home. Cooking as survival in isolation.
    As part of our binging we have the best laughs even watching City Bakes with Paul Hollywood. Russian city of St. Petersburg laugh a minute… due to the awful closed captioning! Even though almost all is in English the captioning scrambles from the start as you watch “City Bacon” Free on YouTube.
    Love Street Foods old and new season, and Padma Lakshmi show Taste the Nation where she shows food from immigrants became or is becoming American eats. Hamburger, hot dog,tacos, dumplings from around the world. Breads. Pasta.
    United we Cook!

  53. Mmmm.. yum! Asian fusion is on the menu tonight, thanks for the inspiration!

    Here in Aussie land we cook our roasts dry rather than the pot roast (covered in water) method. So in case you want to give the easiest Aussie Beef roast ever a go, I put a 1-2kg Chuck Steak Roast into a slow cooker, with a tablespoon of oil (just to stop it sticking), as much crushed garlic as you want rubbed into the meat, and then a good generous splash of Balsamic Vinegar over the top. Like about 1/4 a cup full. Then cook it on High for two hours, Low for 4-6 hours depending on the size of your cut of meat and your personal slow cooker. Remove and try to cut up your meat (it should fall apart), and throw some beef gravy powder into the left over liquid to make your gravy (Aussie gravy is different to American gravy, I’m not sure if you have the gravy powder?), and done… so so easy and delicious.

    The results are also brilliant shredded, and put into a savoury pie crust for the best meat pie. *yum*

    • I’d guess that your gravy powder is similar to our packets of gravy mix, but that’s just a guess on my part.

      I don’t like the roasts with all the liquid, so I make Mississippi Pot Roast in my Instant Pot (you have to have some liquid in a pressure cooker, but it doesn’t call for a lot) and it is really good. I make it periodically for my grandma (she’s 89, doesn’t cook anymore, and has trouble chewing chewy things) because each time I do she says it’s the best meat she’s ever had. Gotta love an easy audience. ????????????????

      • Bless you for cooking for your Grandma! A simple meal shows so much love … and that’s what makes the world go round!

  54. I love chuck roast; granted I use my instapot to cook it, but it has great depth of flavor. Cooking is art that tastes good, and nourishes the ones we love. Can’t go wrong -brakes sometimes I make new dishes that totally get me chopped, but I learn from my mistakes. Not all art is good art, not all of my dishes are tasty but I learn something every time. Cheers.

  55. Thank you so much! Looks and sounds delicious!
    We hope your whole family is healthy soon.
    Sending good wishes for speedy recoveries.

  56. I take aa roast with tons of garlic and beef broth. I brown the roast in a hot pan to seal all the juices in, then addit to the crock pot and garlic ,sliced onion,and salt and pepper. I cook it on medium over night. The next day everything is super tender. You can make soup or stew, can set some aside, to use for bbq baked in the oven to get the stick gooey quality. Or you can also use it for tacos or enchilada filling. All super yummy

  57. I like spicy and love Korean gochujang. A tablespoon in the marinade or on the side of the plate to dip the meat in. It’s good on burgers too in lieu of ketchup. Or on beef tacos. You can get small tubes on amazon which take up hardly any fridge space and last for months.

  58. Ha, I am re-reading “Burn For Me” and guess who orders Bulgogi on their first date?

  59. “those little chicken skewers you find in Chinese buffets in the South”
    Are you telling me that the rest of the world does not know the joy of chicken -on -a-stick? Inconceivable.

  60. Thank you so much for the cooking post. I’m surely going to try this meal.

    Hugs and well wishes for everyone.

  61. Hi,
    We love Korean food in our house! (I don’t like red meat, but my brothers do)
    So out of the blue I made this for my brothers and they loved it!
    So here’s a picture of what I made.
    Thank you for recipe and the inspiration.

  63. This is my favorite recipe for Beef Broccoli. I make it all the time for my daughters, substituting plant based meat nuggets for the beef (one is vegan, the other is vegetarian). Ironically, I’m Asian (Vietnamese-Korean) and the recipe is from a Ukrainian-American. It’s really easy and best of all, it’s DELICIOUS!

    https://natashaskitchen.com/beef-and-broccoli/

  64. Dear Ilona
    Glad your family is getting better. I live and work in a hospital in Asia. Was feeling ill for a week and thought it was the odd hours I have been putting in. I am now in isolation for 2 weeks. Your books are helping me get through. When I can’t read I listen to the audio book. I love Renee. Thank you

  65. The Morkovcha was really good. I made it for dinner as a side with steak and grilled capsicum. I really really like it.

    🙂

  66. We love bulgogi. I follow a recipe from our governor’s wife, Yumi Hogan, who is Korean. In her Yumi Cooks bulgogi video, she cooks everything all together, no marinating, over a medium heat in a big sauté pan. She uses thin-sliced hanger steak, sesame oil, brown (?) sugar, fresh ginger root, onions (green and white), and a ton of pressed garlic (maybe from a jar?). It ends up sort of soupy. She serves it over white rice. Your recipe sounds better — flash frying in batches over high heat sounds like a better flavor. I will try adding the mirin. The sushi vendor at Whole Foods (Gengi on the east coast) sells their Genji brand soy sauce that has mirin in it, it’s delicious.

  67. If gordon likes sweet flavours and you’re after something new look for tamarind dishes. I’m a fan of sweet and discovered this recently, the only let down was I didn’t discover this when I was younger.

  68. Mmmm… morkovcha. I haven’t eaten it since I left Tajikistan 7 years ago. Fresh and homemade is best!

  69. Korean food is comfort food at our house too. I have started buying Mexican cuts of beef for bulgogi though. Milanesa is really thin, and it saves my arthritic hands. My Husband was stationed in Korea, and says using Coke in the marinade sweetens and tenderizes the meat. Seems to work. We’re having it for our son’s birthday this weekend.

  70. Everything sounds great, but what is mirin? I am romanian, and I don’t know what it is so I can try to make the recipe. Thank you

  71. Excellent recipe. Bulgogi is a favorite but have never figured what me as t to use or how to cut it. Thank you so much

  72. That looks so good! Thank you for the recipe!

    My kids are weird and adore ethnic food waaaaay more than American fair. Bulgogi is a favorite and they always say yes to Korean food.

    Happy writing!

  74. Thank you for sharing your comfort food recipes with us!!!

    It’s the next best thing to actually being able to share a meal with someone.

    It is appreciated. ????

  75. The cooking genes skipped me – I can burn water…

    I love your cooking and baking posts because they remind me of hanging out in our kitchen when I was a kid with my mom while she was making dinner. Sometimes just to watch and talk, and sometimes to help. Good memories of childhood!!

  76. Thank you Ilona for last night’s dinner suggestion. I tried both recipes, serving them with rice, kimchi and a side salad. Delicious!

    I did change up the bulgogi recipe slightly by adding several splashes of sake, less sugar and more ginger. I had some fresh shitake mushrooms, which I sliced up and lightly fried and the cooked onions from the morkovcha, both of which I then tossed with the beef at the end.
    I added a pinch of chili flakes to the morkovcha.

  79. Sounds delicious ????. I regularly (okay, maybe obsessively) check your blog every day. I also look at recipetineats.com. Nagi’s recipe yesterday was for chicken broccoli stir fry. She does lots of Asian recipes that the BDH might enjoy.

  80. If the beef gets sliced too thick, you can use a meat mallet to thin, tenderize and also beat out some of your Covid frustrations.

  82. I’m whole food plant exclusive and this sounds ideal for tempeh. I am still failing to get a good flavour when I use it so looking forward to trying this. Thanks, Ilona

  83. I am probably the pickiest eater in the entire BDH and that’s not even counting the things I really can’t have. But the recipe blogs are such great fun. I imagine making these great sounding recipes and some times change things just enough to give it a try. One of my favorite activities pre-Covid was a cooking club where once every two months everyone would bring a dish for a buffet of a previously chosen cooking style. Reading all the favorite recipes and the enthusiasm for cooking is a great upbeat treat.

  84. I have not tried this yet – both the chuck and carrot recipes sound delicious. If you want to get relatively uniform thin slices of meat, I use a mandoline and the handle-spiky thing that comes with it to save my fingers.

    Happy cooking and glad Kid ? aka Brandi is on the mend and everyone’s physical-emotional health is improving.

  85. Yum! I really appreciate when you share recipes. Bulgogi is always a family favorite and we will try the carrots. Cucumber kimchee is also fast and easy.

    HUGE shoutout on the chocolate cake recipe you shared ages ago, maybe back in April? I was struggling with my mom’s death and had a birthday I didn’t want to celebrate–as well as mother’s day. My husband made the cake and it was so incredible we ate the entire thing. We did manage to freeze half and defrost a slice at a time, but I kid you not–BEST ever!

  86. HEB!!!! I so miss shopping at HEB! I moved to Louisiana and I miss HEB almost as much as I miss my friends! But I will say that this looks delicious!

  87. I don’t know what half the sauces in my pantry are (mom visits every year and stocks up at the Asian market before she leaves) but I’m pretty sure I don’t have mirin. Off to hmart/amazon now ^^

  89. Yum! That looks FABulous!! I was rereading Hidden Legacy yesterday, and actually looked up bulgogi when I was reading. Looking forward to trying it. Thanks for sharing!

  90. I have a Polish/Korean friend that loves to make Bulgogi for us. He even cheats and will go to the Asian market between our places and pick it up. There’s a pork version as well. And it’s good in a sandwich as well. yum!!!

    This post has me missing his Bulgogi….darn pandamic

  91. I live near philly.

    Super short cut that works great for bulgogi : shaved / thin sliced ribeye (a grocery store staple, meant for cheese steaks, dontcha know). Not, not, not, minute steaks or any frozen mystery meat rectangles, sliced ribeye!

  92. So I tried both today for my garden party/barbecue, and it was super delicious! I love bulgogi, but the traditional version with nashi pear and stuff is just so much hassle, so I’m glad you recommended the easy version 🙂 best cooking inspiration in a long time!

  94. Get outta town …! What a lovely dish to post.

    This is comfort food.

    Problem, for me, Laryngopharyngeal Reflux, silent reflux (acid) attacks the vocal cords.
    This is so well described l can see how to dumb down the spices and still get good seasoning
    Morkuvcha
    I want to try, the cayenne goes, vinegar is minimal, portion will be small, lots of water to drink AND it may be a NO but definitely a try.

    Thank you

  96. Oddly enough, I wanted to make another recipe that called for some of these ingredients and decided against it….so I have most of everything on hand! I truly love different recipes, and I am so sorry you are homesick. My husband and I hailed from NE America and ended up in Oklahoma, not as bad as missing Russia, where EVERYTHING here is different, but there are days I just miss “familiar”. Also, hope #2 is on the mend, and that it WASN’T the virus. All of you stay healthy, please. Counting down my days to “Emerald”, and getting my fix weekly with Ryder, but I miss Julie. 🙁

  99. Love your books. Love your blog but your going to miss HEB when you move to Florida????

  102. This looks delicious! I have to find mirin … I have the other items. Also, what a wonderful way to cook carrots 🙂
    Thank you for the recipes, everybody!

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