Korean Spicy Pork - Daeji Bulgogi

This is a dish I loved at our local Korean restaurant and once I found the correct chilli paste it became easy to make at home.   The pork is served with boiled rice and peanut sauce, which you wrap in a lettuce leaf like a fajita.  The chilli paste might be hard to come by but I found it in my local Chinese supermarket, it’s called gochujang paste and if you Google it you can see a picture and find stockists.  If you can’t be bothered wrapping in the lettuce just serves this like a stir fry but you may want some sort of cooling salad or vegetable as it’s spicy!

Serves 2

Preparation time: 15 minutes (plus marinating time)

Cooking time: 15-20 minutes

Pork:

500g pork fillet

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 cloves garlic

½ tbsp ginger

2 tbsp palm sugar

2 tbsp rice wine or sherry

2 tbsp gochujang paste

1 large onion

Peanut Sauce:

2 tbsp peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp palm sugar

1 tsp gochujang paste

75 ml water

Boiled rice and round or iceberg lettuce leaves to serves

Slice the onions into half moons and add them to a bowl along with the finely chopped ginger and garlic and the rest of the marinade ingredients.  Cut the pork into fine strips and add it into the marinade, stir well, cover and refrigerate for anything from half an hour to overnight.

Heat a large frying pan or wok and add in the pork and its marinade, in the meantime put your rice on to cook.  Continue to fry the pork over a medium to high heat for about 15 minutes until the pork and onions are cooked through and the stir fry is quite dry.

For the peanut sauce put all of the ingredients into a cold saucepan and heat gently whilst stirring to amalgamate the water and peanut butter.  Allow the sauce to gently bubble until the pork and rice are ready, if it gets too thick then add a little more water, I like a consistency similar to double cream.

When it’s ready serve all the element separately and start wrapping!