Korean-style grilled pork belly starts with a steel or stone grill that is placed right in the middle of the table. It’s surrounded by plates of the pork belly, green chili peppers, onions, garlic, mushrooms, carrots, cucumber, lettuce, and fresh shredded scallion salad. You cook the dish at the table in front of your guests, and everyone chooses their own bites, wrapping their choices in a lettuce leaf with some dipping sauce and scallion salad. It’s a prime example of Korea’s inherently social style of cooking and eating, and it is a great choice for get-togethers. Soju, a distilled liquor often made from sweet potato starch, is often served with pork belly, which makes the meal even more festive. There’s a special grill pan for cooking this dish, and a portable burner too; see Equipment for Korean Cooking. Both are available in the cookware section of Korean or Asian grocery stores and are relatively inexpensive. You can substitute pork shoulder or pork tenderloin or even beef tenderloin for the pork belly, but the dish is tastiest when the meat has some fat on it. Most of the fat will melt away as you grill it, but not before it has infused the meat with its rich taste.
Serves 3 or 4
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 green Korean chili peppers (cheong-gochu), stemmed and cut into ¼-inch slices
- 7 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 7 or 8 white button mushrooms, sliced
- 1 onion, cut into ⅓-inch rounds
- 1 small cucumber, cut into 3-x-¼-inch sticks
- 1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into 3-x-¼-inch sticks
- 1 head red or green leaf lettuce, leaves separated, washed, and drained
- Soybean Paste Dipping Sauce
- Scallion Salad
- 1½ pounds pork belly, sliced into 1½-x-1½-x-⅛-inch strips
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Set a grill pan over a portable burner (see above) and place it in the center of the table.
- Put the chili peppers and garlic on a small plate, the mushrooms and onion on another small plate, and the cucumber and carrot on a third small plate. Pile the lettuce leaves onto another plate or in a shallow basket. Put all the plates, along with the dipping sauce and the just dressed scallion salad, on the table.
- Bring out the pork belly on a large platter. Heat the grill pan over medium-high heat. Spread the sesame oil all over the grill pan for flavor.
- Place several pieces of the pork belly, some garlic, some mushroom slices, and some onions on the grill and cook until the bottom of the pork belly is crisp. Flip the meat over with tongs and continue cooking until cooked through and both sides are crisp and light golden brown. Turn the garlic, onion, and mushrooms too. If the heat is too high, lower it. Transfer the cooked meat and vegetables to a serving plate and place more ingredients on the grill pan to cook.
- Have your guests make their own packets, putting some cooked pork belly, a little dipping sauce, a bit of scallion salad, a piece of chili pepper, a piece of raw or cooked garlic, some cooked onion, and some mushrooms into a lettuce leaf, wrapping it up, and eating it in one bite. The carrots and cucumber are for dipping in the sauce.
