Well shits to expensive and I’m finally home enough so I’m learning to cook. Turns out when your not being constantly criticized for existing, cooking isn’t nearly as terrible! (Trauma made me hate cooking).
So far I’ve been keeping it very simple. Store bought pasta, store bought sauce, put them together, that kind of thing. I think I’m getting ready to branch out and learn more.
I’d love to hear some things from those of you who know your way around the kitchen. If you have a recipe you love or, a story to tell or, a warning you learned the hard way or, a great website/cookbook/youtube channel or, anything else you feel like sharing.
I’m just here to learn some stuff, hear some stories and get some ideas to try. Thanks for having a fun cooking convo with me!
this recipe is one of my favourite things to eat. it’s am gonna break it down into phases for you, so it’s not so difficult at first.
first time around, just fry 500 grams of ground beef until nice and brown. while it’s cooking, make this sauce :
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce 4 cloves garlic finely minced or grated 1 tablespoon sesame oil 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon rice vinegar 1 tablespoon ginger root grated 1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce (sambal olek)
once the beef has finished cooking, add the sauce to the pan, and cook for a minute or two. serve it over rice.
if you like that recipe, then you can make it fancier and tastier.
this time, you want to first chop up an onion, and cook that until translucent. when you first put the beef in the pan, chop up some baby bok choy, (or something similar), into strips. wash it. then when the beef is almost finished cooking, add the bok choy to the pan. cook until it starts to wilt. (usually my pan is very full from the bok choy, but don’t worry… it will decrease in size as it cooks).
once the bok choy has wilted, add the sauce like before, and cook for 1-2 minutes, and serve over rice.
next time you make the recipe :
before you start cooking, get a carrot, and shred it. place it in a bowl, and add 1 Tbsp rice vinegar 1/2 tsp sugar pinch of salt mix that up, and leave to sit while you do the rest of the recipe. congrats - you just made ‘quick pickled carrots’ which sounds fancy when you tell people.
make the rest of the recipe as before, but this time, also cut up some green onions, so that when you’ve finished cooking, you add rice to the bowl, put the ground beef on top of that, then add your shredded carrot, and sprinkle some green onions on top. now you have a fancy presentation, and even more flavour!
the ultimate version of this :
do all the cooking and prep mentioned above, but this time also dice up some cucumber. you will also need a few extra garnishes here : sesame seeds, Kewpie mayo, sriracha, crispy fried onions, and crunchy fried garlic.
this time you are going to plate everything in separate piles. rice, beef, cucumber, carrots, and green onions. then you want to drizzle really thin lines of Kewpie back and forth, across the whole dish. then rotate the plate/bowl 90 degrees, and do the same with sriracha, being careful here, if you don’t want too much heat. then sprinkle the sesame seeds, fried garlic and fried onions over everything. congrats - you have now made a restuarant-worthy and trendy Korean Beef Bowl!!!
feel free to ask questions, because i think there’s a huge chance that i didn’t explain this very well. good luck on your culinary journey!
Thank you!