Tag: korean tacos

Pampered Chef Korean BBQ Sauce and Kkeanip Bison Tacos
Pampered Chef, a direct seller of kitchen tools and culinary products only through independent salespeople, offers a modest line of culinary sauces — the Pampered Pantry — and marinades. One of the more recent additions is Korean barbeque sauce.
This particular sauce is not a marinade, so I wouldn’t recommend using it as one. The sauce is too thick to penetrate into the meat very far. And at $12 for an 11.5 oz. jar, it’s nearly a dollar an ounce. It’s a little too pricy to waste it by using it as a meat marinade.
The main ingredients include soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. If a sauce or a marinade doesn’t have at least three of these four ingredients, it wouldn’t earn “Korean” or “Korean-inspired” in my book.
However, some ingredients are concerning. First the sauce is sweetened with applesauce. Applesauce is sweet but apples don’t do much to give additional flavor. This is why most Korean kalbi marinade recipes use Asian pear, kiwi or even a cola soft drink. These have a much bolder flavor to rise above the key four ingredients mention before.
Also odd on the sauce label are cornstarch and soy lecithin emulsifiers. Many Korean cooks, chefs and culinary historians, instead, use rice flour to thicken gochujang and sauces for kalbi or bulgogi.
I tested the bottled sauce twice to explore possibilities.
First, I made a simple, bulgogi stirfry. The sauce was a little weak. Maybe, it was the sweetness without distinct fruit flavor to counterbalance the pronounced soy sauce and black pepper flavors. Though the sauce had ginger and garlic, its most pronounced flavor was black pepper — not what I was expecting for a bulgogi sauce.
This is the first incarnation of the Kkaenip Bison taco, with shredded kkaenip, ground bison, Oaxaca shredded cheese and a touch of bibimbap gochujang. (Tammy Quackenbush photo, originally posted on Instagram)
Second, I tried to give the sauce some Korean credibility by adding kkaenip. It is one of my favorite Korean herbs and traditionally eaten with Korean barbecue.
In the first version of Kkaenip Bison Tacos, I served sauce-sauteed [amazon_link id=”B002PEXGV4″ target=”_blank” ]ground bison[/amazon_link] on a flour tortilla with shredded kkaenip.
In the second version, I tossed the tortilla for a ssam-style wrap with whole kkaenip leaves. Instead of traditional ssam of leaf-wrapped galbi or dakgalbi (grilled beef or chicken), I put a couple of spoonfuls of ground bison right on a kkaenip leaf, folded it in half and ate it.
If you’re trying to reduce the carbohydrates in your diet, consider putting a couple of spoonfuls of meat directly onto a kkaenip leaf and rolling it up. (Tammy Quackenbush photo, originally posted on Instagram)
With a few of your favorite Korean sides, such as kimchi, mung bean sprouts and spinach namul, you’ll forget about the sauce shortcomings. Just as properly tailored clothes can make an average woman stand out in a crowd, dressing up this sauce with a covering of kkaenip did the same for this dish.
Korean-style bison tacos
June 24, 2012
Korean Fish Tacos
The modern fish taco was born in Baja California, although different kinds of fish tacos have been part of that Mexican state’s cuisine for centuries. I made a Korean fish taco with 된장 doenjang-glazed cod, Korean pear salsa and coleslaw (shredded cabbage or lettuce would work).
Savory Doenjang and sweet, crunchy Korean pears add texture to these fish tacos. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
In November, U.S.-grown shingo pears are still in season, and ones imported from Korea are still readily available in many Korean grocery stores.
Korean-grown shingo pears are noticeably larger than their American siblings. Unlike some supersized fruit, the larger pears tend to be more crunchily juicy and sweet without being syrupy than the smaller versions. Cubed raw shingo pears refreshingly complement salads, sandwiches and salsas.
Doenjang-glazed Fish Tacos With Shingo Pear Salsa
(Makes two to four servings)
November 29, 2011
New Bibigo Retail Sauces in Korean Tacos
ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal was approached some time ago by publicists for CJ Foods, the owners of the Bibigo restaurant franchise. CJ Foods is also a subsidiary of CJ Corp., one of South Korea’s largest food manufacturers. They offered free samples of their new line of grocery products.
Note: I have not received any compensation for this review by CJ Foods (or anyone else) other than the samples to try out for this review.
Bibigo began its corporate life last year as a small chain of Korean restaurants fervently trying to reinvent 비빔밥 bibimbap as fast-casual cuisine. The restaurant chain has now spread to Singapore, Beijing and Los Angeles.
Less than a year later, the Bibigo name is branching out into the retail market with sauces, marinades and pre-made Korean foods for grocery stores across the US. A CJ Foods rep told me consumers will start seeing Bibigo on US store shelves in January 2012.
I admit I’m biased toward made-from-scratch Korean foods. My writing and cooking talents—meager as they are—are supposed to inspire people to start their own small gardens and cook their own food from scratch.
Yet even the most eager home cook can’t be on his or her game 24/7. And not all have the time to make every marinade, 반찬 banchan (side dish) and dipping sauce from scratch every day. That’s why I’m trying out these sauces and marinades for myself.
When I cracked open the bottle of Bibigo’s Original 불고기 bulgogi sauce ($4.99 suggested retail price), the Northern California wine connoisseur wannabe in me noticed a combination of soy, sesame, ginger and black pepper on the nose. I found all those ingredients on the label, with black pepper towards the bottom. That was encouraging.
The label on the side of the glass jar has marking suggesting how much marinade to use based on how the amount of meat. One bottle will marinade 5 pounds of meat.
Later, I opened up the Bibigo 쌈장 ssamjang ($4.99 suggested retail price) container. The paste was bright red like 고추장 gochujang yet had a texture more closely resembling 된장 doenjang, which is a Korean fermented soybean paste somewhat similar to miso.
The miso-like texture would certainly be a plus for American audiences who may find the presence of whole soybean chunks in a ssamjang a little unsettling. The Bibigo ssamjang was spicy and salty — but not too salty.
When I combined them in the recipe below, the sweet bulgogi marinade matched well with the spicy, salty ssamjang. Fresh from my garden, the perilla leaves’ mint-like flavor played interference nicely.
This recipe is pretty minimal on purpose. I really wanted to taste the sauces. Beside shallots, consider adding diced bell peppers, black beans or any other vegetable.
I used ground beef because it’s the most common taco filling in the U.S. Yet this marinade should also work well with other cuts of beef as well as lamb, goat or buffalo.
October 11, 2011
Review of Korean taco truck Seoul on Wheels
I found Seoul on Wheels at the Eat Real Food Festival in Oakland, Calif. at Jack London Square. Julia Yoon was serving up a truncated menu of Beef, Chicken, Pork or Tofu Korean tacos and spicy chilled noodles.
We tried the chicken and beef Korean tacos. They were very good. The charcoal grilled beef and chicken BBQ was served on a corn tortilla with chopped romaine lettuce, sliced daikon radish and topped with sour cream and spicy gochujang. The bulgogi taco had the right amount of sweet and savory that one expects from bulgogi and the grilled chicken was a good kind of spicy. A small amount of sour cream kept the spice balanced.
The best part of our visit to Seoul on Wheels (besides trying their food) is an impromptu interview I did with a young man who was trying Korean food for the first time. Check out his reaction to his first bite at 2:03.
Seoul on Wheels has a Twitter account with more than 3,700 followers broadcasting their whereabouts. You can also find them on Facebook.
March 28, 2011
Two versions of Korean tacos
Posted by Tammy
Since 2010 seems to be the year of the Korean taco truck, I decided to bring this popular Korean fusion food to you. I’m serving up a So-Cal vs. Nor-Cal face off between two very different versions.
California is Korean fusion cooking central, in a manner of speaking. According to the 2007 U.S. Census, more than 322,628 native Koreans make California their home. It has the largest number of Korean immigrants of any in the U.S., even Hawaii.
Kogi-style* Korean Tacos
First off the grill is a version inspired by Roy Choi’s famous Kogi taco truck. The Kogi Korean taco was born in Southern California, with a strong Hispanic influence. A warm corn tortilla is topped with bulgogi (savory-sweet grilled beef), shredded cabbage and the spiciest kimchi you can find.
The key to this recipe is the bulgogi marinade.
1 pound thinly sliced milanesa beef sliced into thin strips
4 ounces pear juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sake
1 tablespoon honey or mul yoot (Korean malt syrup)
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons sesame seed oil
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1. Mix with the beef and marinade for at least a half-hour. The longer the better.
2. Grill the bulgogi in a cast iron skillet until it is well done.
3. Place one warmed corn tortilla on the plate with a small handful of shredded cabbage. Top with bulgogi and kimchi. This recipe will serve four.
Namu-style Korean Tacos
Another Korean taco style hails from San Francisco, which has over 150 years of Chinese, Japanese and Korean immigrant history going back to the earliest days of statehood. Many of the leaders of Korea’s independence movement used San Francisco as their base of operations during the Japanese occupation.
The Namu-style Korean taco is a nori — kim, in Korean — “taco shell” with a bit of sushi rice, bulgogi or boneless kalbi (grilled ribs) and kimchi on top. It’s more of an appetizer than a meal, but it packs a lot of flavor. For the seaweed used for the “shell,” I used Annie Chun’s Roasted Seaweed Snacks, which I found during my futile search for locally sourced gochujang sauce. I have both the wasabi- and sesame flavored-wraps and used one of each for these tacos.
Asian grocery stores sell small sheets of kim. Koreans often wrap them around a small bite of rice and pop the package into their mouths, eat the seaweed sheets by themselves or cut them into small strips to sprinkle on bibimbap (mixture of ingredients such as vegetables, meat and an egg with rice).
1 pound carne de taco beef marinaded in bulgogi marinade for at least a half-hour
2 nori sheets per taco
sushi rice
diced tomatoes
The most complicated part of this recipe is the sushi rice. Here are the basics.
2 cups Japanese short-grained white rice or Calrose short-grain rice
1/4 cup rice vinegar (no substitutions)
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup sugar or add more to taste
1. Heat the vinegar, sugar and salt in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil the mixture. You can also microwave the mixture for 30-45 seconds to achieve the same result. Leave sitting off heat until needed. You can make this portion ahead of time.
2. Take 2 cups of rice and rinse two to three times until the water runs clear or nearly so.
3. If your rice cooker has a sushi rice setting, use it. Otherwise, remember you need equal parts of rice to water. For example, 2 cups of rice needs 2 cups of water. Keep covered until the rice is done.
4. Once the rice has finished cooking, take off the lid and let the rice cool down for about 15 minutes.
5. Once the rice is cooled down, add the vinegar seasoning mix to the rice.
6. Turn the rice out of the pot and into a nonreactive glass or wooden bowl (tradition dictates a wooden bowl to better absorb the excess liquid). Use a tool like a shamoji, which is a flat Japanese rice paddle.
7. Use a gentle chopping motion to spread out the grains of rice and ensure the seasoning covers every grain. To speed up the cooling process, some people use a hand-held fan to help in the cooling process, but I didn’t find that necessary.
8. Once it’s cooled off, you’re ready to grill your bulgogi and assemble your tacos.
9. Put two sheets of nori on the plate, one on top of the other. Add up to a few tablespoons of sushi rice on top of the nori.
10. Pile a couple of tablespoons of bulgogi and garnish with diced tomatoes
Which version do you prefer? Tell us in the comments below.
* Kogi style tacos are in no way affiliated with the Kogi Taco Truck, just inspired by it.
July 17, 2010
Korean tacos come to Atlanta
by Tammy
Korean taco trucks are no longer limited to America’s West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland. Now Atlanta, the largest U.S. Southeast city, has Yumbii. It’s one of the latest such roving restaurants to follow in the wake of intense popularity for Kogi, which has more than 67,000 listed followers on Twitter.
Yumbii chef Tomas Lee fuses Korean, Mexican and Southern cooking traditions onto a small plate. He is the former executive chef of Atlanta’s ritzy Buckhead Diner.
Lee calls Yumbii, “the result is the best damn meal you’ve had out of a food truck east of the Mississippi.” The menu includes Korean barbecue tacos and burritos as well as pulled pork sliders topped with cucumber kimchi.
Using an increasingly common marketing method for rolling restaurants, Yumbii updates Atlanta-area residents on the truck’s latest location via Twitter.
ZenKimchi would like to hear about your experiences with this newcomer to Korean fusion gourmet on the go.

July 4, 2010
Namu at the San Francisco Ferry Building
Namu is a Korean and Japanese fusion restaurant owned and operated by three Korean American brothers — chef Dennis Lee and his brothers, Daniel and David — who have established a presence at the Thursday and Saturday farmer’s markets at the San Francisco Ferry Building. They serve what they call “cutting-edge new California” cuisine.
The market menu (PDF) features kimchi fried rice, okonomiyaki and their own spin on Korean tacos (ssam in Korean), using toasted seaweed as the wrap.
Korean seaweed topped with rice, bulgogi and kimchi.
While there a recent Thursday, I tasted the Korean tacos, which cost $5 for two. Each have two sheets of Korean or Japanese seaweed with some sushi rice topped with teriyaki-marinated beef and kimchi salsa on top. Each taco is two or three bites of Korean fusion genius and more healthful than those wrapped in soft or fried tortillas.
Korean french fries topped with chopped kalbi and gochujang will fill you up.
The gamja (Korean for potato) fries are made from “hand-cut potatoes” and topped with kimchi relish, gochujang (Korean spicy red pepper paste), sweetened mayonnaise (Namu uses the popular Asian brand Kewpie), teriyaki, chopped short ribs and green onions. Orders for the fries were flying off the grill, especially in tandem with the Korean tacos.
The okonomiyaki, or Japanese savory grilled pancake, was in demand as well. Namu makes its “crispy and gooey flour pancake” with kimchi and market vegetables, topped with bonito flakes, okonomiyaki sauce and sweet mayo. Most ordered it with a sunnyside-up fried egg. I saw one brave soul pass me with a plate of okonomiyaki with a raw egg on it though.
The dish’s name comes from okonomi, which can be translated “as you like it,” and yaki, for “grilled” or “cooked.” A thinner version is similar to the Korean flatcake dish panjeon.
The okonomiyaki were made fresh and to order.
Namu, whose Korean name means “tree,” is at the Ferry Building on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. — get there before the 1 p.m. rush — and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The brick-and-mortar restaurant is located at 439 Balboa St. in the city, near Golden Gate Park. The menu there also includes Korean fried chicken, ramen, bibimbap and additional Japanese-influenced items. Also served there are more than 30 selections of wine, sake and soju.
June 18, 2010