A great way to break a beef fast

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 I served one of our favorite meals at home last night -- marinated Korean beef barbecue with white rice and side dishes. My 12-year-old son still calls this "cook on the table," a reference to how it is served in restaurants, even though I use a non-stick grill that covers two burners on our stove (photos are generic).

Image via Wikipedia

We started making this meal at home to avoid questions about the quality of the beef served in Korean restaurants in  North Jersey. I used beef I had sliced off of a free-range, grass-fed, whole beef tenderloin from Australia, sold at ShopRite under the Nature's Reserve label. I bought it on sale in December for $4.99 a pound, put the slices in a plastic freezer bag and added bulgogi marinade from H Mart in Little Ferry.

Image by bobafred via Flickr

Yesterday, I returned to the H Mart for red leaf lettuce, scallions, seasoned bean sprouts and hot pepper paste. I prepared four cups of white rice in our rice cooker and set out the lettuce leaves, three kinds of kimchi and the pepper paste. I grilled the beef, scallions and sliced garlic at the same time.
At the table, we dipped a slice of meat in the hot pepper paste and wrapped it a lettuce leaf along with garlic or scallion, rice and kimchi. The goal is to see who can make the biggest package and still fit it into his or her mouth. The beef, which I cooked just past medium, was really tender. It's a delicious and fun meal. Since the first of the year, this was only our second meal of beef.

A frugal, filling, satisfying meal

For our Sunday dinner, I unearthed from the freezer a pound and a half of thinly sliced beef that had been marinating in Korean bulgogi sauce since mid-June, when I bought a whole Australian tenderloin for filet mignon for only $2.99 a pound at ShopRite with a store card.

I am not going to tell you this free-range, grass-fed beef melted in our mouths. But it was tender and flavorful, and cooked in about 10 to 15 minutes on the stovetop. Wrapped in red-lettuce leaves with kimchi,  soybean paste, steamed rice and scallion salad, it made a fun meal last night. We also steamed three kinds of Korean dumplings from Best Dumpling in Englewood, but I failed miserably at making an egg souffle, a traditional accompaniment for Korean barbecue.

To get tender Korean barbecue, I had to trim the tenderloin carefully. Now, I have only a couple of steaks left, but I missed last week's sale on the Australian beef, which was going for $3.99 a pound with the ShopRite card. I'll wait, though, reminding myself that the last time we ate Korean "mystery meat" barbecue at a restaurant, it cost more than $80 for three and the service was just-so-so. See earlier post, "Korean restaurant falls off list of favorites."