Korean Rice Bowls

Chris and I love Asian-inspired dishes. We're suckers for all the Asian flavors, pretty much across the board. So the other night, when we were flipping through our magazine recipe book for something new to try, we knew we had to try Bon Appetit's Korean Rice Bowls with Steak, Asparagus, and Fried Egg.



But, as always, we adapted it to what we had on hand.

Korean Rice Bowls
adapted from Bon Appetit

Start with a skirt steak. If it's frozen, bring it out and get it until it is about half-thawed. If it's not frozen, stick it in the freezer for about an hour to harden the meat up a bit. The reason for doing this is that it makes slicing the beef thin much easier. Slice it in strips against the grain, and drop into a plastic bag. In the bag, add:

1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbs sesame oil
2 chopped green onions
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs sherry
2 minced garlic cloves
1 tsp chopped ginger

Seal up the ziplock bag and let the beef marinate for at least 30 minutes. During this time, the beef will finish thawing.

While the beef is marinating, combine the following ingredients:

1 tbs toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp chile powder

If you have a mortar and pestle, grind the mixture together. If you don't, put it in a plastic bag and beat with a meat tenderizer or something of the like. Then set aside.

Just before starting to cook your meat, put some short-grain rice in your rice cooker and start it cooking. We also have a little steam tray for our rice cooker, so we chose to cut up some broccoli and steam that with the rice, in lieu of the asparagus that this recipe calls for.

Once your beef is ready, put it into a bowl for easy access.



Then set a grill pan on the stove. Or in our case, the bottom of a panini press pan!



Put about 2 tbs of oil in the bottom of the pan and heat until the oil just begins to smoke.

Then, working in batches, start grilling the meat. It will take about 1 minute per side as the meat is very thin and the pan is very hot. Also, you don't want to cook the meat all the way through anyway, because it will be tough as leather.



Ignore the phantom-hand in the photo above...Chris doesn't pose well!



To keep the cooked meat hot as you are cooking the other batches, make sure you have some sort of bowl ready with either tented aluminum foil, or in my case, a pot top.



Once the meat is all cooked and staying warm in a covered dish, quickly cook a sunny-side up egg.



Since I'm not a fan of runny whites but I do like runny yolks, and since I am terrible at making an over-easy egg, I usually put about a teaspoon of water in the pan once the egg has started to cook and cover it for about a minute. The steam from the water will cook the top of the whites without cooking the yolk. A handy little trick!

Now you're all ready to assemble! Put some rice in the bottom of a bowl, then scoop some beef in, the broccoli, and the egg.



Finally, finish with the sesame seed/salt mixture.



This turned out to be one of my favorite magazine recipe dishes we've made yet. It will definitely have a few repeat performances!

Enjoy!