A week or so ago someone (I forget who) brought us a couple of Asian pears – I knew immediately what to use them for – Korean Grilled Short Ribs. These are not the delicious Korean short ribs in the pressure cooker I made last winter; instead, we make a marinade and grill thin, flanken cut ribs. I looked back in my recipes – knowing I made this before; it was way back in 2010, before I was blogging. I originally found the recipe on chow.com but I couldn’t find it when I looked for it yesterday. So, you can you can read the copy I made here. It’s delicious and pretty easy to prepare.
Let’s get started! The flavor stars here are Asian pear, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. (Um, pay no attention to that rice vinegar bottle in the background. I grabbed it accidentally instead of the rice wine bottle).
Chop some stuff and measure some stuff
Next we’ll make a thick paste by puréeing the pear, onion. garlic and ginger. Then we toss in everything else and let it sit to blend for 15 minutes. While that is going on we pull the rib out of the fridge and dust them with kosher salt. Finding the flanken cut ribs is a challenge. I’m sure the awesome butchers at our local New Seasons Market would do it, but I also knew I’d find them pre-cut at Uwajimaya. These are cut 1/2″ thick (yes I measured) and contain three bones each.
You can put the ribs in a flat baking dish and cover with marinade but I prefer putting them in a zip lock plastic bag so I can flip and mush every hour or so with no muss or fuss. All I had was a super big 2 1/2 gallon bag – I think a 1 gallon bag would work.
Marinade for at least one hour and up to 24 hours- I did these about seven hours. Toward the end I started a batch of rice. I pulled the ribs out of the marinade about 30 minutes before cooking and rest at room temperature. They come out nice and coated – ready for the grill.
I preheated the grill on high for 15 minutes then brushed and oiled the grates. To oil, I pour a little vegetable oil in a small bowl. Then fold up three pieces of paper towel; grab them with long tongs, dip in the oil and quickly brush the very hot grates; be careful – you might want to wear heat resistance gloves. Then put the ribs on the grill. These cook real fast – as quickly as 2 minutes per side – almost as long as it takes to put them on the grill. I actually did about 3 minutes – barely enough time to get a picture. If you want to be sure, use an instant read thermometer to let them get to medium rare.
After a quick grilling they are ready for serving.
To round out dinner we had rice with gochujang sauce and kimchi. I’ve talked out gochujang sauce before; this is some seriously good stuff: hot but with a lot of savoriness. Back in the 1990’s I went to a little bento place for lunch where they made a sauce which was close to this. I’ve lived without this flavor for over 20 years! It’s nice to have it back in my life. When we had this last winter I found a bottle in our grocery store. While I was a Uwajimaya I looked for more. One of the clerks said this was it. Okay.
I opened it up – and it looked like the real deal.
Dinner is served!
The ribs are finger food; I cut them between the bones, then pick a section up by the bone and gobble it up.
This is easy to make with terrific results. I rated it 4 stars in the past; I thought about upping that to a full 5 but for now we’ll leave it at 4 for now – definitely 4 1/2 . If you aren’t vegetarian I highly recommend this dish. You can even make it in the winter on the grill because the cooking time is so short.
Verdict: Excellent: ★★★★ Try it!
Too bad I forgot who brought use the pears – we would have invited them over to dinner!
A note on the photography. I used my new Sony A7Rii camera with a Sony FE 90mm Macro G OSS lens. For lighting I used two Godox TT685S flashes triggered from a Godox X1 wireless flash trigger. I spent close to an hour working on getting the best lighting with minimum shadows. They are not perfect, but I’m very happy with the results.
