Galbi

Korea's grilled beef short ribs in a marinade sweetened and tenderised with grated Korean pear, soy, sesame and garlic

Origin: Seoul & Korea

From the journey of Pear.

Galbi means rib, and the dish is beef short rib cut thin, marinated, and grilled over charcoal at the table. It is the formal end of Korean barbecue: where samgyeopsal is unmarinated pork belly and everyday food, galbi is what a family orders for a birthday or a visiting relative, and the price of beef in Korea has kept it that way. The marinade is built on grated Korean pear, and the pear is doing real work rather than sweetening alone. Pyrus pyrifolia, the round sand pear known in Korea as bae, contains the protease calcain, which breaks down muscle protein; several hours in grated pear leaves short rib noticeably tender in a way sugar alone cannot. Korean cooks have used it this way for centuries, and the substitution of kiwi fruit or pineapple in overseas kitchens works on the same principle but far more aggressively, turning the meat mushy within an hour if it is left too long. Two cuts are used and both are correct. Wang galbi, king ribs, are butterflied out from the bone in a long ribbon that unrolls to a flat sheet; LA galbi is cut across the bones in thin strips about a centimetre thick so that each piece carries three little bone rounds. The second name is a genuine Korean-American coinage from the butcher shops of Los Angeles, where the flanken cut was available and the technique took hold, and it travelled back to Korea in the 1980s as a name for the cut. Galbi is eaten in ssam, wrapped: a piece of grilled rib, a dab of ssamjang, a sliver of raw garlic, and rice, folded into a lettuce or perilla leaf and eaten in one mouthful. Doing it in two is considered a small failure of nerve.

Ingredients

Meat

  • 1.2 kg beef short ribs, flanken cut about 1cm thick

Marinade

  • 1 Korean pear, about 400g, peeled and grated
  • 0.5 onion, grated
  • 120 ml soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp soft brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 3 tbsp mirin or rice wine
  • 2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 8 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 tbsp ginger, grated
  • 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 4 spring onions, thinly sliced

To finish

  • 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

To serve

  • 1 head soft lettuce, leaves separated
  • 12 perilla leaves
  • 4 tbsp ssamjang
  • 1 head garlic, cloves thinly sliced raw
  • 600 g steamed short-grain rice

Method

  1. Rinse the ribs and soak them in cold water for thirty minutes, changing the water twice, to draw out the blood. This is standard Korean practice and gives a cleaner-tasting grilled rib.
  2. Pat them thoroughly dry.
  3. Grate the pear and the onion on the coarse side of a box grater, keeping all the juice.
  4. Whisk the pear and onion with the soy, sugar, honey, mirin, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and pepper, then stir in the spring onions.
  5. Turn the ribs through the marinade so every surface is coated, cover, and refrigerate for six hours or overnight.
  6. Do not go much beyond twenty-four hours. The enzyme in the pear keeps working and the meat eventually goes soft rather than tender.
  7. Bring the ribs to room temperature and lift them from the marinade, letting most of it drain off. Wet meat steams instead of charring.
  8. Get a charcoal grill or a heavy ridged pan very hot.
  9. Grill the ribs for two to three minutes a side, until the sugars have caught in dark patches and the edges are crisp.
  10. Work in batches and do not crowd the grill; the pieces must sear rather than stew in their own juices.
  11. Snip the grilled ribs into bite-sized pieces with scissors, which is how it is done at the table, and scatter the sesame seeds over.
  12. Serve at once with the lettuce and perilla leaves, ssamjang, raw garlic, and rice, and eat each piece wrapped in a leaf in one mouthful.

Notes

Korean pear is the correct fruit and does the tenderising; a firm Nashi is the same species and works, whilst a European pear is softer and sweeter and gives less. Do not marinate beyond a day. Drain the ribs before they meet the heat and keep the grill hot and uncrowded. The sugar in the marinade burns readily, which is wanted in patches and not across the whole surface, so turn the ribs often. Flanken-cut short rib is sold as LA galbi by Korean butchers and cut to the right thickness.

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