Name: Korean Grilled Short Ribs
Ingredients: garlic; pear; asian pear; leaves; romaine lettuce; sugar; black pepper; dry sherry; sake; asian (dark) sesame oil; honey; soy sauce; scallions; asian pear dipping sauce; beef short ribs

Steven Raichlen

Korean Grilled Short Ribs

Kalbi Kui

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy
Direct Grilling Serves
4

Appears in

The Barbecue Bible

By Steven Raichlen

Published 1998

About
Recipes
contents

Mention kalbi to a Korean and watch his mouth water. Beef short ribs are something of a national obsession here, served braised to fall-off-the-bone tenderness or savored in the delicate soups and soulful stews for which the Land of Morning Calm is famous. But the most popular way to eat kalbi is grilled (kui). Korean chefs have developed an ingenious method for handling this flavorful but hard-to-eat cut of beef: The meat is sliced and butterflied to create a long, paper-thin strip, which is grilled right on the bone.

Dine at a restaurant in Korea and the waitress will set a charcoal-filled brazier in the center of the table. Each person cooks his kalbi to taste, then wraps the meat in lettuce leaves and dips it in a sweet-salty pear sauce.

Ingredients

For the Ribs and Marinade

2 pounds beef short ribs, cut into 2-inch lengths and butterflied (see box)
½ Asian pear or regular pear, peeled and cored
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 scallions, both white and green parts, trimmed
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons Asian (dark) sesame oil
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons sake or dry sherry
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For Serving

1 head romaine lettuce, separated into leaves, rinsed, and spun dry
Asian Pear Dipping Sauce

Asia
Korea
Dinner
Gluten-free

Method

Advance Preparation

hours for marinating the meat

Prepare the ribs and marinade: Place the butterflied ribs in a large nonreactive baking dish.
Coarsely chop the pear, garlic, and scallions and place them in a blender with the soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, sake, sugar, and pepper. Process to a smooth puree. Pour the marinade over the ribs in the baking dish, cover it, and let marinate, in the refrigerator, for 3 hours.
Set up the grill for direct grilling and preheat to high.
When ready to cook, brush and oil the grill grate. Arrange the butterflied short ribs on the hot grate and grill, turning with tongs, until done to taste, 2 to 3 minutes per side (4 to 6 minutes in all) for well done (as Koreans tend to like their short ribs).
To eat: Cut the meat off the bone of a short rib and wrap it in a lettuce leaf. Dip the beef and lettuce in the dipping sauce and pop it into your mouth. Don’t forget to gnaw on the bone, which may well be the best part of kalbi kui!

How to Butterfly Short Ribs for Korean-Style Grilling

Have your butcher cut the short ribs into two-inch lengths. (You can butterfly the longer ribs sold at the supermarket, but it will be a little more difficult.)

Position one piece of short rib at the lower right corner of a cutting board with the cut side (the sawed bone end) facing you and the thick meaty part of the rib on top. (If you’re left-handed, position the rib on the lower left corner of the cutting board and reverse the directions.)
Using a small, sharp knife, holding the blade parallel to the cutting board, and working from right to left, slide the knife through the meat along the top of the bone, almost to the left edge to free it. Don’t cut all the way through; you want to leave the meat attached to the bone. Fold the meat flap over to the left to make a flat rectangle of meat attached to the bone.
Now, holding your knife parallel to the cutting board, make another cut through the meat two thirds of the way down, again almost to the left edge, and open this flap up, too. You’ll have a strip of meat with a left half that is twice as thick as the right.
Make a final cut through that thicker section on the left, this time through the center, to but not through the left edge. Again, the knife should be parallel to the cutting board. Open up this last flap of meat. You should wind up with a very thin strip of meat 4 to 5 inches long and about 2 inches wide, with the bone attached at the right side.
The last step is to tenderize the meat. Place the strip of meat flat on the cutting board and score it slightly by tapping it with the back of a heavy knife on the diagonal—first in one direction, then in the other—to make a crosshatch pattern.

This sounds a good deal more complicated than it really is. Cutting and unfolding the beef is quite similar to unrolling a flattened roll of paper towels.