We’ve been soaking up Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and taking to heart her message of eating foods produced locally (also: 10 reasons to eat locally). So for our first trial run at making our own bibimbap, we decided to take a trip to the Union Square Greenmarket Farmer’s Market on a wet Saturday morning to gather some fresh ingredients.

We knew ahead of time that we wouldn’t find too much variety so early in the season, so we set our sights on finding three to four veggies. We decided on the following:

• sunflower sprouts
• Crunch Bean Mix (mung, lentil, and adzuki)
• baby bok choy leaves
• parsnip
• black radish

We tried our best to find meat at the market, but the only beef available was frozen, which would require a day to thaw. We went to Whole Foods and got ourselves a pound of pasture-fed ground beef.

The Gochujang

One of the central elements of a good bibimbap is the red chili paste, the gochujang. While tasty gochujang is easy to pick up at a Korean grocery store, we thought it would be healthier and a fun challenge to create one from scratch. After much tinkering, we came up with a result that tasted close to store-bought gochujang but with ingredients familiar to us. Here’s what we used:

• red chili pepper flakes (bought at a Korean grocery store)
• garlic
• onions
• organic wheat flour
• organic maple syrup
• sea salt
• organic pitted dates
• rice flour
• water

It’s best to have a very good food processor and a lot of patience. We adjusted the ingredient amounts several times before getting the potency of taste and heat that we felt was acceptable.

Tasty Meat

As we remarked in previous posts about bibimbap at other restaurants, meat is one area that often seems overlooked. We gave our ground beef some extra attention and used the following ingredients for seasoning:

• sea salt
• ground pepper
• sesame oil
• chopped onions
• chopped garlic
• organic maple syrup

After mixing and marinating, we tossed everything in a pan in high heat. The result was a subtle yet sweet-and-savory meat component.

Testing 1, 2, 3…

On our first endeavor, we took the following steps:

• put down a layer of brown rice
• added steamed baby bok choy leaves
• added a handful of the Crunchy Bean Mix
• added a handful of the sunflower sprouts
• added shaved parsnip
• added seasoned ground beef
• added fried organic egg
• drizzled a bit of sesame oil
• added a pinch of roasted sesame seeds
• added a few pinenuts
• added a spoonful of gochujang

The resulting mix was a bit bland. The gochujang definitely needed more salt and the overall bowl was overwhelmed by the raw taste of the Crunchy Bean Mix and the sunflower sprouts. Also, we cooked the egg for a bit too long, so it wasn’t as yolky. But overall, each bite tasted fresh and held some promise.

For round two, we made the following adjustments:

• added more salt and maple syrup to the gochujang
• took out the sunflower sprouts
• drizzled sesame oil directly on the rice
• used a runnier egg

The use of sesame oil directly on the rice made a big difference. It was easier to mix (the yolk also helped) and tasted better. Taking out the sunflower sprouts lessened the raw taste, but the Crunchy Bean Mix still masked other flavors from time to time. The gochujang tasted better, but it still lacked the kick.

For our final round of the day, we took a timeout and re-examined our ingredients. We felt that the Crunchy Bean Mix needed to be blanched so the raw taste would go away. Our worry was that the crunchy element would be greatly reduced as a result. We then realized that the parsnip, if cut into strips, could make up for the crunch, but not before some flavor was infused. Inspired by this David Chang video demonstration in which he pickles daikon and carrots, we gave it a try with the parsnip: rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt, and water. After a few hours, the result was magic - a crunchy, sweet-and-sour addition to our bibimbap. Here is how the full bowl rounded out:

• brown rice drizzled with sesame oil
• added blanched Crunchy Bean Mix and baby bok choy leaves
• added seasoned ground beef
• added pickled parsnip
• added fried egg
• added large spoonful of gochujang
• sprinkled roasted sesame seeds and pinenuts

This was by far our most successful bowl of the day. The pickled parsnip was a welcome flavor and the raw taste of the Crunchy Bean Mix was gone. The stronger gochujang finally brought us heat and sticky consistency (we added more rice flour). The egg in the photo looks a bit dirty because we cooked it on the same pan as the meat, but it tasted perfect. We were very pleased with our final result, and especially happy that we were able to incorporate some local, super-fresh in-season ingredients.

One area we’ll need to work on more as we continue is the rice. The brown rice we selected for this trial run came out too dry and flavorless. Hopefully we’ll get to test more rice in the coming weeks.

Feel free to try mixing yourself a bowl at home!