eat | jahng joh leem

my mom stayed with me over the thanksgiving weekend and we ended up eating a lot of korean food +  hiking + cooking. she taught me how to make this beef dish called jahng joh leem, which is beef boiled in water/spices/soy sauce and eaten as a small side dish. two of my favorite people love it, so i wanted to learn how to make it for them. the meat came out a bit tougher than it's ideally meant to be. my mom blames it on the cut of meat...of course! we also didn't have enough of the juice/broth. next time i'd add more water to start, which means adjusting the ingredients accordingly. (for those of you who need exact measurements, it's time to practice your intuition.)

the main thing to keep in mind in korean/my mom's cooking is that everything is made to taste. if you've tried something delicious once, you need to call upon your tastebuds to help you recreate it. and if you've never tried it, make an old lady korean friend asap!  what i really mean to say is, "good luck."   :)

what do you need? 

• 5 lbs of beef ball tip
• 4 bay leaves
• a lot of garlic, peeled with ends cut off
• 1 tbsp of peppercorns
• ginger, peeled and sliced
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2-3 cups of soy sauce
• a lot of time

how do you make it? 

1. bring a large pot of water to boil

2. wash the beef ball tip and quarter the meat while you wait for the water to boil

3. add the meat and bring to a boil / as soon as it boils, pull out the meat

[step 1-3 is an added process to clean the meat of its impurities]

4. give the meat a quick rinse and put aside / wash the pot

5. bring a large pot of water to boil (again)

6. add about 20 cloves of garlic, the ginger, peppercorn and bay leaves

7. just before it's about to boil, add the beef

8. bring the beef to a boil for about 10 minutes

9. reduce to medium heat and boil the meat until you can effortlessly stick a chopstick all the way through (can take between 30 minutes to 1.5 hours! - depends on what kind of pot you're using, how big the meat it cut, etc.)

10. pull out the meat and put in another pot

11. pour the liquid through a strainer to remove all the sediments, into the new pot with the meat

12. add soy sauce until the liquid is salty-ish (~2-3 cups)

[tip: add it incrementally and just keep trying it]

13. add about 3 tbsp of sugar

14. bring to a boil

15. lower to medium/low heat and add the rest of your cloves of garlic

16. cook until the garlic gets soft-ish

17. remove from heat and ladle meat out into a glass jar, add liquid to cover 

18. let it cool down before sealing it up and putting it in the fridge

this side dish will keep for a while, as long as you don't stick bacteria infested things in there like...your fingers or chopsticks that you put in your mouth. and the way you typically eat it is by shredding the meat into bite-sized bits and enjoying it as one of your side dishes in a korean spread. have you tried this dish before?