the greatest BEEF marinade ever created... (Korean Kalbi)

What if I were to tell you that there's a very special marinade that uses common pantry ingredients with flavors that everyone will enjoy. It works both well as a marinade and a sauce and not to mention it's super simple to make. Well today we are diving deep into the world of Korean Kalbi and I will be telling you exactly why I think this is the greatest beef marinade ever created. But before we get into this recipe, I wanted to take a little trip to Koreatown to meet up with my friend Gene so we can get a sampling of this dish from the pros. We're in K-Town on 32nd street in the middle of Manhattan and what's cool about this neighborhood is that it's one long stretch of all Korean businesses. Mostly I would say 99% Korean-owned businesses and it's a mixture of spas, restaurants, office buildings and what's cool about K-Town here is that they've mimicked kind of the Korean style where everything builds up. So you've got your ground level restaurants but upstairs you've got the spa, you've got the hair salon, you've got offices. Everything's stacked on each other. One of the big barbecue spots in K-Town, there's so many spots to choose from but one of the most popular places is Samwon Garden. It started in Busan which is in the south of South Korea and this is I think their first location in the U.S. and what better way to start It's one of the more traditional Korean spots where you get all the banchan, you get all of the side plates and it's really a traditional kind of presentation of the meats. So galbi is short rib and there's two ways to prepare the short rib barbecue. There's obviously the popular marinade, it is sweet, savory but people also enjoy the non-marinated galbi which is just pure meat. You're just going for that meat. I think I behold this special place in people's heart because it was like the celebration meal. So Koreans think of it as okay we have an occasion to celebrate, let's go and treat ourselves with a fancy cut of meat with a great marinade and let's do it around the barbecue. Now the first reason I think galbi is the perfect marinade for a home cook like you is right here. Take a look at these ingredients. I'm guessing you recognize all of them and you probably have 75% of these already in your pantry or fridge because this dish takes advantage of all of those classic Asian pantry essentials making it very accessible for the home cook. For the condiments we're going to be using soy sauce. I'll be using mirin but you can sub that out for rice wine, rice vinegar or sake. We've got sesame oil and some type of sweetener. I prefer honey for the flavor but you see a lot of traditional recipes using brown sugar so that will work great as well. We've got the holy trinity when it comes to the aromatics for this dish. Green onion, garlic and ginger. Such a perfect combination together and I'll be throwing in some sesame seeds which is optional but you know I like sesame seeds great for flavor. Now there's one final ingredient right here the gemini of this marinade which is kiwi. Now of course adding fruit to a marinade will impart some sweetness a little bit of flavor some nice tropical flavor from this kiwi but there's a much higher purpose for kiwi in this marinade. Kiwi has a special enzyme in it called actinidin which actually works to soften meat so when you mix kiwi with a protein it goes to work taking those longer protein strands and cutting them into smaller proteins creating an overall softer texture of the meat. Now if you can't find a kiwi feel free to use a pear. A lot of Korean style marinades use Asian pear, Korean pear because it has a similar enzyme not the same one but it does pretty much the same thing so use whatever's available to you. So I guess the question is well why do we want softer meat? Why do we need to tenderize the meat? Well remember what Gene said? Kalbi is short rib which we have right here. These are short ribs and it's what you pair with this marinade but a short rib is absolutely loaded with connective tissue so most recipes that you see for short ribs like I've taught you on this channel are braised so that connective tissue has time to melt down and get nice and soft but Korean barbecue is not like American style southern barbecue where you're slow cooking on indirect heat. When you go to a Korean barbecue place all of the meat gets cooked on a direct heat so methods were developed over time in Korea to make a cut like this more palatable when you're not slow cooking it. One being that enzymatic breakdown of the marinade but there's also another method that helps. So if you marinate this short rib and sear it up no matter what it's going to be chewy on the inside. So there's a special technique for butchering these short ribs. I'm going to first take off this fat cap on the top and we're going to reserve that. You can always render down this fat to cook your meat in. Now we've got the bone right here we're going to butterfly this meat open slicing right down the bone but not all the way to the end. Leave about a quarter inch and then we're going to start that butterfly cut so you can see it just opened like that. Now we have a flat piece pretty cool and we'll just cut all the way down. So now we have a completely flat piece of short rib almost like a skirt steak but there is one more step and that's just scoring the meat like this just like you saw on the meat I got at the barbecue place. That's where this inspiration came from. Score it the other way. We've got these cross hairs that's going to really help that marinade penetrate in and tenderize the meat. Take off a little bit more of this fat on the other side clean it up and then same thing score down. Pretty cool bone-in butterflied short rib. Now this right here is the traditional style short rib you would see in Korea for this dish but since this is a full breakdown I had to mention another cut which is the LA style. If you go to Koreatown in LA you're going to see this right here. Now this cut is very unique and it's definitely a little trickier to find in a standard supermarket. You can definitely find in your local Korean market but when they're butchering it they actually make the perpendicular cut cutting across all of those bones usually leaving around two to four bones per cut so obviously this is nice and thin. There's no butterfly or preparation needed these are ready for the marinade but these are really fun to cook up and when you grill them up and eat them you get to chew around all of those little bones getting all that tendon and connective tissue action which is a nice treat. So I'm going to marinate both of them and we'll see what the differences are. Now another reason kalbi is just the best is because it's just so damn forgiving. I don't know what it is but I think just these ingredients in general if you're missing one if the ratios are off guess what it's still going to taste great. I've made this so many times over the years it's always slightly different and it always tastes freaking delicious. I guarantee if you interviewed 20 Korean grandmothers all of the recipes would be slightly different. So this is just my version that I've been recipe testing if you follow this guaranteed success but if you're missing an ingredient it's going to be all right. Start off with some garlic, three fat cloves, two little knobs of ginger peeled the best I could with one thumb. Now for the green onion I'm going to cut off the roots don't need those and I'm going to take the bold part add that to the mix and then I'll slice through the greens and we'll reserve those for just a second. Now one kiwi will tenderize about five pounds of short rib so I'm only going to use half. Spice is completely optional you actually don't see it too much in kalbi but I'm going to add some chili flakes, quarter cup of soy sauce, quarter cup of mirin, two tablespoons of sesame oil, two tablespoons of honey, that's your sweetness. Always after the sesame oil because it slips right off. Look at that totally clean good bit of salt still needs salt even with that soy sauce. Here we go now watch this. A lot of recipes call for a ton of water I like a more concentrated marinade myself. That's so damn good. Green onion go a tablespoon of sesame optional but you know I love the sesame. Now your standard marinade when you taste it is going to be super pungent not something that spicy not something that you would want to use for a sauce but this marinade right here let me tell you this makes a perfect sauce which is another reason why I think this is the best marinade. So what I'm going to do is add this goodness to our beef but I'm going to save some and this right here perfect stir fry sauce which we'll take advantage of in just a second. So I'm just going to get this mixed up but there's something to keep in mind that kiwi is now active so it's going to start breaking down this meat. If you let it marinate too long it's going to be too mushy but of course we want to give this time to really build flavor. So I find that 12 hours and overnight marinade is really enough to tenderize the meat but also let all of that goodness penetrate. This short rib is really going to soak up that juice and with a little pre-production planning we go from this to this in 12 hours. Now there is some liquid at the bottom but you can really see how that meat has soaked up a lot of that marinade and we're ready to sear these up. Now of course if you can barbecue these go ahead they're going to be incredible but you can certainly cook them in a pan as well. I'm using this carbon steel pan by which is the sponsor of today's video and Misen is a kitchen tool company on a mission to inspire and enable great cooking and this carbon steel pan that they make has quickly become my favorite pan of all time. If I could only have one pan for the rest of my life it's this carbon steel right here. Why? Well it's the perfect balance for me. It's got very similar properties to cast iron with an incredible ability to hold heat for excellent searing but it's actually 42% lighter than cast iron making it much easier to handle and maneuver when cooking. It's also naturally non-stick which I was very skeptical at first when I got it but over time by just using it a lot the metal actually traps in microscopic layers of polymerized oil and it builds up this beautiful non-stick surface. So if you're interested in this carbon steel pan or any other Misen products click the link below in the description and use code word ProHomeCooks for 20% off your first order. So let's fry up some of these ribs. I'm gonna preheat the pan for about three to four minutes to ensure a nice even crust and you remember this right here the excess fat from the short rib? My pan's on a medium heat and while that's preheating I'm just gonna get this fat rendering off. Keep it in the family no waste here that's the fat I'll use to fry up the ribs. So these are pretty much rendered you can see all that beautiful fat. Pop those in there. Here's our layer of oil I think I can get rid of a little bit of that. We'll go in with the traditional cut first. Keep a close eye on those. So there is sugar in this so you gotta really yeah see it gets colored quickly but that looks incredible. Wow probably needs about three minutes on the other side. Look at that bone in action. So here's the short rib and you can see the transformation of tenderness. If you just seared up a short rib and sliced it open it wouldn't look like that. That's so good damn. Tastes exactly like a skirt steak or a flank steak which is incredible out of a tough cut and you could let that go and get even more tender. I actually like a little bit of chew. I don't want it too soft. God damn that's good. Perfect flavors sweet little sticky little tangy slight spice in there super aromatic wide range of flavors happening in that bite. So I'll go in with some of the LA style. Much thinner they're going to take a little less time to cook. So for these pieces I like just cutting them right down in the middle of the bone and then you have the most incredible little handheld bites. Wow you rip it straight off the bone. That's so good. Clean the bone. I go back and forth between those two different styles of cuts but right now this LA style it's hitting a little harder. Now I still have to take advantage of the rest of this marinade but you can see my pan has taken some serious damage right here but that's all right it's really easy to restore this carbon steel pan back to baseline. All you have to do is take some type of abrasive sponge get off all of that crust and then once it's nice and clean to restore the non-stick surface I'll hit it with some oil. I like using a flaxseed oil and I'll just heat that up for a few minutes to restore this back to baseline. All right I'm just gonna use a little bit more of this fat. I chopped up a little bit of zucchini and I will get that in there nice and brown. I ripped up some mushrooms and I will toss those in. Finally our marinade slash stir fry sauce. Cook that down for about three minutes. Plate that up over some rice get some of that beef on there and maybe a little kimchi. That's a pretty serious bowl of food. I was talking to Gene when we were out to dinner and he brought up a great point about Korean barbecue. One of the main reasons it's exploded in the U.S. is because these flavors are very familiar. You've got the sticky, the sweet, the tangy. Classic barbecue flavors with a little twist and that's the last reason why I think this is the best marinade. It's familiar. You're gonna love it. Try it out at home. You can marinate other things with it as well. It doesn't just have to be beef. It certainly works great with veggies. So that's gonna do it for the video. If you want more delicious meat recipes click this right here and I'll see you in the next vid.