Bibimbap is a classic Korean dish that is basically white rice topped with vegetables, meat, and an egg cooked over easy, which you break and mix in with the rest of the ingredients before consuming. I've only had bibimbap in Korean restaurants and never even came close to attempting it myself. Luckily, I discovered Maangchi.com, a website with a massive collection of authentic Korean recipes that is run by a New York transplant who was originally from Korea. It didn't take too much digging before I found a bibimbap recipe.
But first, I had to make a marinade. Although I had made bulgogi before using a different recipe, I decided to try Maangchi's just for variety's sake. I then marinated the ground venison in the bulgogi sauce overnight in the fridge.
The next day, I made some rice in the rice cooker and prepared the veggies, which included shredded carrots, about 10-15 shiitake mushrooms, 4 small zucchinis, a package of fern brakes (also known as kosari and available at Korean supermarkets), bean sprouts, and spinach. Of course the combination of veggies is not set in stone, but I wanted to follow the recipe exactly in order to replicate the authentic flavor. I did double Maangchi's recipe as I had double the amount of meat.
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| Veggies for the bibimbap: (L-R) Shredded carrots, shiitake mushroom, julienned zucchini, fern brakes (kosari), bean sprout, spinach |
A huge part of making bibimbap involves arranging the bowl in an attractive manner. I don't know that I did a great job with that, as I apparently fail at cooking eggs over easy without breaking the yolk (I tried multiple times, and it was just not meant to be for this non-egg eater!), and I completely forgot to add the gochujang (Korean hot pepper sauce) before snapping the photo! But for what it's worth, here's my bibimbap (the rice is at the bottom):
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| Venison Bibimbap |
Because of all the different ingredients that required preparation, I found the bibimbap to be rather high maintenance and time consuming. It was worth the attempt though, as it was very tasty, and the ground venison which was slightly sweetened from the bulgogi marinade was astoundingly delicious. Though I may be too busy to make this on a regular basis, it was great to have discovered another way to use ground venison.
Recipe courtesy of:
Maangri.com (get the bulgogi recipe here and the bibimbap recipe here)
