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We grew up eating Korean barbecue - bulgogi and kalbi. While bulgogi is made with marinated thin slices of beef, kalbi is made with beef short ribs and, in our humble opinion, should only be prepared on the grill. And since we had a sunny day on Sunday and our patio faces South... we decided to take advantage of the warmth by firing up the grill and trying the Trader Joe's version of kalbi - Korean Style Beef Short Ribs.
Found in the frozen section, the short ribs had been in our freezer for no less than a few months. We left the plastic package in the refrigerator for a day or so until it was fully thawed. Inside the plastic package, the beef ribs are vacuum packed in a second plastic bag so freezer burn did not seem to be an issue at all. We cut open the sealed package and separated the short ribs. We often have very thin kalbi but these were relatively thick slices, heavily marbled with fat (we regret not taking a picture of this!). While that is somewhat customary with Korean barbecue, the slices had perhaps slightly more fat than we had expected.
Grill hot, we get the short ribs on the fire. A few minutes on each side is really all it takes for kalbi. We've find kalbi to be a very forgiving meat on the grill and the thick slices make it pretty hard to dry out. The sugar in the marinade caramelizes and gives the beef a nice brown color and some dark edges are okay. We could see bubbles of juice and fat sizzling away on the bone. We decided to sample a piece right from the grill.
Our first thought was that it was slightly salty but the flavor was pretty spot on. We finished up the grilling and then sat down with some brown rice and kimchee to try the trifecta. With the rice and kimchee, the salt factor seemed to tone down a bit. The fat on the meat kept it very moist and for the most part, very tender. It tasted good. It not exactly like mom makes, it was darn close. Definitely close enough to get that Korean barbecue fix at home on your own grill.
Overall, we'd buy these again. They flavor is really good and if we had the ribs in a restaurant, we'd be saying the same thing: Not what mom makes but really good. If you've never tried Korean barbecue, you should begin by going to a restaurant and cooking at your table for the full experience. However, if you want some of that flavor at home, this is a good, simple way to get it. Plus, if you lean over the grill, you'll even smell like Korean barbecue, just like you had it in the restaurant.
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L Stop! You have
redeem yourself, O' Madame Butterfly of Pyongyang! For at least the time being :-)
Finally you've made a positive contribution to furthering the Korean barbecue culture in Chicago! Your ancestors are now proud and can rest easy.
To the masses of Chicagoist Readers to whom this concerns, I know its been six long months in planning, but our protest WE sceduled to begine next week is off.
We will no longer need to
force The Chicagoist to banish L Stop into exiled as a writer for The Oymyakonist.
Now I can’t wait to fire up the grill this winter and pass off Trader Joe's Korean Style Beef Short Ribs as Spook's Korean barbecue!
I think I will baste in with Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce first!
Spooooooook! I am happy you are pleased.
Mmmmm, Spookgogi.
-L.
I've gone as far as to put these in and take them back out of the cart on several trips to Trader Joe's. I will definitely leave them IN the cart next time!
Yes I'm looking for more alternatives to restaurant kalbi since 24 hour Korestaurant closed. Wu Chon, SAn soo, and Sulga are too expensive!!