Simple Bulgogi Beef Bimibap

Recently one of my coworkers was talking about how much she missed Asian food during the pandemic. My immediate response was, "Do you have the app Mealime?" I have made so many Asian dishes using the app. You just need a few extra ingredients in your pantry and you can make many delicious dishes with a new flavor profile. Just a few ingredients I have now that I never cooked with before are toasted sesame oil, fish sauce, chili garlic sauce, and rice vinegar. 

On Saturday night, I made an improvised bulgogi beef bowl that was so delicious! Bimibap is a Korean rice bowl with a lot of different toppings. 

Ingredients: rice, ground beef, fried egg, English cucumber, shredded carrot, kimchi

Bulgogi is beef marinated in a sweet sauce. Traditional bulgogi beef is prepared with a better cut of meat than ground beef, but that's what we had. Caleb picked up a marinade at Costco, and I just cooked the beef as I would have done with taco meat and let it simmer in the sauce with a little water added for several minutes while I fried the eggs. 

I don't know if I've ever small grated a carrot before, and there was something so luxurious about taking the time to do it! I miss going out to eat, too, and there's something nice about actually taking time to prepare good food for yourself. 

I knew that I wanted to do cucumbers, and as I was trying to decide how to chop them, I remembered this Mealime recipe that had flash-pickled cucumbers. So I mixed some rice vinegar, brown sugar and red chili flakes to soak the cucumbers in. My only regret with this meal is that I didn't cut up more cucumber. 

No bimibap is complete without kimchi. This year is the first year that I have enjoyed kimchi. I'm not sure what changed. Usually it's too spicy for me, but now I LOVE it. This is my favorite kind. You can buy it at Pick 'n Save. As you can see, we used half the jar for this one meal. 

Ingredients

Customize the ingredients for your family-- both for the number of people and what they like. Bimibap usually has many other toppings-- I just used what we had (and what was fast and easy). The following ingredients served 2 adults, 1 toddler, and 1 baby with no leftovers. 

rice

1 lb. ground beef 

Korean BBQ Sauce to taste, about 1/4 cup-1/2 cup 

eggs (serve with 1 or 2 eggs on each bowl)

2 carrots 

1/2 English cucumber

2 Tbsp. rice vinegar

1 Tbsp. brown sugar 

red chili flakes 

kimchi 

Directions

1. Cook the rice. 
2. Brown the ground beef. 
3. While the beef cooks, prepare the vinegar mixture by mixing 2 Tbsp. rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp. brown sugar, 1 Tbsp. water and a shake or two of red chili flakes. Thinly slice the English cucumber and add to vinegar mixture. 
4. Peel and small grate the carrots. 
5. Drain the fat off the beef and add the sauce and a little water. Add more sauce to taste and let simmer on low. 
6. Soft fry the eggs, or cook to your desired level of doneness. In this dish, it's nice to have the yolk a little runny to mix with the other ingredients. 
7. Assemble the bowl: rice, meat, egg(s), cucumber, carrots, kimchi. Enjoy!