I am absolutely nuts about Jeyuk (stir-fried pork in a spicy sauce). It’s the best new (to me) dish I’ve had in the last 5 or 10 years. Before moving to the DC area (in '08), I had never had much Korean food, but there’s plenty around here, and I can’t get enough of it. Bulgogi’s great, and the Korean fried chicken is great, and the fluffy mandu dumplings are great, but Jeyuk over white rice is just other-worldly delicious.
Anyone ever made it at home? Any tips? Any other fans of the dish?
I would like a recipe. Been to Korea twice, have two Korean kids, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of or tried it.
You can google Jeyuk for random results, but I always defer to Maangchi for Korean food recipies. She’s pretty awesome.
I don’t know much about Korean food aside from having occasionally visited some of the BBQ restaurants in Tacoma, but that recipe looks delicious.
I’ve never seen “pork belly” on sale in any grocery store around here, but in those pictures it just looks like really thick-sliced bacon to me. Were I to make this at home, would I be able to blanch some thick-cut bacon and chop it up to get a comparable substitute, or do I need to find a specialty store and buy the real thing?
The main difference between pork belly and bacon is that pork belly is not cured, while most bacon you buy in the grocery store is of the cured variety. There is non-cured thick sliced bacon in some grocery stores. Typically I find it in places like Whole Foods.
Before going to higher end food retailers, ask the butcher at your usual grocery store. Perhaps they can get it for you from their distributor.
It sounds tempting to me–I’ve enjoyed Oriental foods since I was a kid. But I once went to a Chinese restaurant where kimchee was served with every meal. It was so hot I didn’t even swallow the first bite! If jeyuk is hot like that I’ll have to skip it.
I’ve been seeing Hempler’s uncured bacon pop up in the grocery stores here lately. I suppose that after blanching it to get rid of the bacon-y flavor it might make a good substitute.
I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. Maangchi seems to think that even thick sliced uncured bacon is too thin for the purpose of this recipe. I think I read her mentioning pork shoulder (butt) as an alternative to pork belly.