The Beginners Guide to Samgyeopsal (Pork belly the Korean way)

In order to begin making samgyeopsal at home, you're going to need a couple of things. But these regular pans here will basically do the same thing, which is cook the meat. The benefit to having a Korean grill pan is because one of its design elements is to drain some of the excess fat from the pork belly, minimizing the buildup and potential spitting of hot oil at your face. Here's the samgyeopsal, which is unadulterated sliced pork belly from the same cut as your everyday bacon. I like my slices of samgyeopsal to be about a quarter inch in thickness. All right, let's fire this baby up. Once cooked, Koreans typically like to use scissors to cut the pork into bite-sized pieces. Seasoning with salt and pepper is optional, but I like to do it. And that's it. Now let's make a quick sauce. This sauce is called which consists of equal parts salt and pepper and just a little bit of sesame oil. Mix together and just dip the meat into the oil and eat with rice. This is the most basic, quickest way to enjoy your pork belly. Here I bought a bit of ssamjang, which is a sauce built on fermented bean paste and red pepper paste. It hits you with earthy, nutty, savory, spicy, and sweet flavors. To me, this is a core element when having samgyeopsal. Add some rice to a piece of green or red leaf lettuce. If you're drinking your carbs with soju, then just skip the rice. Add your pork and just a little bit of that gireumjang. This is your most basic when it comes to prep and flavor. Another basic but fundamental here, just add rice, meat, and smear on that ssamjang sauce. Don't eat this if you plan on kissing your date in a few hours. Your burps are gonna be stinky. If you and your date are both eating this, then the kimchi breath will cancel each other out. This goes for all wraps aside from the gireumjang. Okay, now we're getting into very flavorful territory. Don't be afraid of the thin slices of raw garlic. You won't notice them too much, but once you revert to no garlic, you'll notice something big is missing. Adding the perilla leaf adds a nice herbaceousness to the wrap. Think mint and basil made a baby. That's what it would taste like. This is by far my favorite and has all the fixings, but the last profile we're adding is heat with a small piece of green chili pepper. This is for the samgyeopsal badasses out there. I know this is not the most flattering thing to do, but try your best to jam this in your mouth and eat in one bite. That's just how we do it. And that's how you ssamgyeopsal. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you give it a try. Thanks for watching and please support by hitting that like and subscribe button.