Korean beef hotpot (Bulgogi jeongol) - recipe
As much as I love Chinese hotpot, it’s a lot of work, primarily because there are so many ingredients to prepare, and so many dishes to wash up afterwards. Everyone sits around the table, using little wire baskets to dip their chosen raw items into the bubbling vat of broth.
Jeongol is a Korean style of hotpot, but the ingredients are simmered together and it’s all shared – there’s no arguing about who “owns” the piece of meat or fish that fell out of the basket and is now up for grabs. With jeongol, each diner picks out what they want from the communal vat.
The ingredients are a little more limited – unlike Chinese hotpot, jeongol doesn’t mix beef, pork, fish and several types of shellfish; it’s usually one main protein. But that doesn’t mean the hotpot lacks flavour.
If you have a portable burner, arrange all the ingredients in the pot, pour in some of the hot broth, then cook it at the dining table, adding more broth and other ingredients as necessary.
As with all types of hotpot, the broth is important. But making beef broth for beef jeongol is a big commitment – you need hours (and a very large pot) to simmer bones and other ingredients. If you have the time, by all means make your own beef broth, but if you don’t, that’s OK.
Korean markets sell all types of packaged beef broth: granules (which I find one-dimensional), concentrates that come in little plastic packets ready to be diluted, and my favourite - ready-to-use packets of seasoned broth. Whichever type you use, it’s good to simmer the broth with a few extra ingredients. If possible, use soup soy sauce to season the broth; it’s pale in colour but has a strong umami flavour. Regular soy sauce, even light soy sauce, will turn the broth a muddy brown.
Because most of the ingredients are cooked at once, you need a fairly large pot: for three to four people, use a wide, shallow pot that holds two litres to 2.5 litres. If the ingredients don’t all fit into the pot together, it is fine to cook half of them and add the remainder when there is space.
Towards the end of the meal, after cooking most of the ingredients, I like to add more boiling broth (or plain water) to the pot and simmer noodles and/or frozen mandu (Korean dumplings), to eat with the soup.
I usually make my own marinade for the beef, but you can also buy bottled bulgogi marinade. The commercial marinade is saltier and sweeter than the home-made version.
If you are serving this to big meat lovers, you might want to double the amount of beef and marinade. Put half of the beef in the pot for the initial cooking, then add the remainder after the first portion has been eaten.
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