Last night, I use the last of the leftover bulgogi sauce (which I believe translates to “beef”, but contains no beef) from my Vegetarian Korean BBQ project which used seitan in place of beef short ribs.
If you are not familiar with it, the sauce (technically, marinade) is a sweet and slightly tangy, moderately thick liquid. The incredibly bad for you high fructose corn syrupy sugars in the sauce caramelize when grilled or broiled, which I probably should have tried – maybe next project.
Generally, meat or protein in marinated in the sauce overnight and then grilled. Grilling makes the sugars caramelize, which is extremely important.
But I tried something different, which taught me a lesson and gave me a better idea how to use this stuff.
I added cubed tofu to a sauce pan with enough Korean BBQ sauce to coat them. I let the cubes marinate for about 20 minutes in the pan (less dishes to clean) before heating it. Marinating was a good idea, indeed. Oh! I added a sprinkling of crushed red pepper and garlic powder to give it a little extra Zing! Zing is definitely preferred here.
I then cooked the tofu in the sauce it was marinating in over medium heat for about 12-15 minutes, until most of the liquid had evaporated and some of the sugar had caramelized from being dry.
The tofu came out with a good flavor from the sauce, but it was also a little soggy and lifeless from the way I cooked it. The sugars did not caramelize as they would have in a drier heat. The outside didn’t crisp at all.
I think marinating the tofu overnight and then broiling it or putting it into a hot, dry frying pan would have been a better option. This is the method used for making the Korean bbq short ribs.
The result was not pretty. I did not take pictures. I was also starving because B got home late (first day back from vacation) and I spent most of the night working on perfecting a roast chicken using a recipe from my beloved Cooks Illustrated that used baking powder to get the skin crispy. A brave endeavor, to say the least. Raw chicken and me do not get along. I would hose our kitchen down with bleach after it was handled there to get rid of salmonella and whatnot if I could, but I digress. Some meals, I find I spend extra time on meat dishes for him because I want to get them right. I hate the thought of wasting meat, so if I’m going to cook it, I want to do it right.
Anyway, I love the taste of the Korean BBQ sauce, and have used it for dipping several times since the Vegetarian Korean BBQ project, but tofu has to be cooked right or else it turns out pretty funky. Adding the crushed red pepper and garlic was a definitely win. A little ginger in place of garlic would have likely been good, too. Maybe a little lime? We shall see.
Author’s note: buy more bulgogi sauce for more experiments! Yum!
April has been a vegetarian her entire life and is an avid home cook. She resides in Maryland with her omnivore husband, four happy dogs, and an african grey parrot. She enjoys spending her non-cooking free time as photographer and business manager for Baltimore Maryland’s Premier Wedding and Portrait Photographers at Blair Wright Studios Photography
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