For our latest bibimbap trial, we tried to simulate a fast-casual restaurant’s made-to-order assembly line.

Unlike the first two trials in which we tried some unconventional ingredients, we opted for more traditional ingredients this round:

• carrots
• cucumbers
• zucchini
• spinach
• shiitake mushrooms
• tofu
• daikon
• ground chicken
• toasted sesame seeds
• toasted walnuts
• fried eggs
• brown and white rice

Some improvements we made from Trial #2:

• a creamier, less viscous gochujang using buckwheat flour mixed with water
• cut up vegetables into very thin and shorter strips for easier mixing

Traditional bibimbap usually comes with some root vegetables, such as carrots, daikon, cucumbers, and zucchini. To enhance the flavor of our bibimbap, we pickled carrots, daikon, and cucumber on the previous night. We used rice vinegar, water, salt and sugar. We pickled two batches of vegetables: one was pickled raw and the other was blanched in the boiling water for 20 seconds (except cucumbers). Although the vegetables tasted great pickled, their sweet and sour flavors were mostly masked once we added the potent gochujang. For our next trial, we’ll look to use less rice vinegar in pickling the carrots and cucumbers.

Next, we blanched the spinach in small batches for 20 seconds. We made sure to take the spinach out of the pan before it lost its nutrients to the hot water. We drizzled sesame oil over the spinach and chopped it roughly (not too fine because we wanted to retain some of the spinach water).

For tofu, we simply steamed it and let it sit in the steamer until it was ready to cut and serve.

Ground chicken, in place of the usual ground beef, was challenging to prepare. Chicken naturally tastes bland. To add flavor, we marinated it with chopped garlic, onions, black pepper, sesame oil, maple syrup, and honey for two days. When sautéing the chicken, we turned the heat to low and let the chicken absorb the marinating sauces slowly. The slow cooking technique brought out more of the flavor.

For the rice, we chose to go with a mixture of brown and white rice. The white part of the rice came out nice and sticky but the brown rice came out a bit al dente. We realized we should have soaked the brown rice in water for a day before mixing it in with the white rice.

When it came time to assembling the bibimbap in a fresh, made-to-order process, we realized that having mini tongs at our disposable would have helped in measuring our toppings proportions. A spoon just doesn’t cut it. But after some practice, we were able to put together some beautiful-looking bibimbap dishes.

Some notes after we mixed everything and ate our fill:

1. we must never again use non-Asian sesame oil
2. putting a few pieces of walnuts worked out really well
3. the gochujang could have been a bit sweeter

We’re getting close! Next up: ground pork!