Yukhoe

Raw beef cut by hand into strips and never minced, dressed at the last moment and eaten at once.

Beef, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains beef.

Ingredients

• 300 g beef topside or fillet, very fresh
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, crushed
• 1 spring onion, very finely sliced
• half a Korean pear, in fine matchsticks
• 2 egg yolks
• black pepper

Method

1. THE BEEF IS CUT BY HAND WITH A KNIFE AND NEVER MINCED. Fine strips, two or three millimetres, cut across the grain with the sharpest knife you have. A mincer crushes the fibres and presses the juice out, and what you get is a wet paste that sits in a pink puddle. Hand-cut, the strips stay separate and have a clean springy bite, which is the entire texture of the dish.
2. IT IS PART-FROZEN FOR TWENTY MINUTES FIRST, which makes cutting it that fine possible at all -- the same trick as the bulgogi on this site, for the same reason and a shorter time.
3. THE MEAT MUST BE AS FRESH AS YOU CAN BUY AND BOUGHT TO BE EATEN RAW. Say so plainly: tell the butcher. A lean cut with no visible fat or sinew -- topside or fillet -- trimmed hard, kept cold, and eaten the day it is bought. This is not a dish to make with supermarket steak that has been sitting in its tray.
4. IT IS DRESSED AT THE LAST MOMENT AND EATEN AT ONCE. Salt and soy draw water out of raw beef within minutes: dressed early, it greys at the edges and weeps into the plate. Mix, plate, serve, in that order, with no pause.
5. THE PEAR IS NOT A GARNISH. Cold, sweet, crisp matchsticks under and through the beef are what keep it from being heavy, and they are the reason this works as something you eat a plateful of.
6. Beef trimmed of all fat and sinew, wrapped, and put in the freezer 20 MINUTES until firm at the edges.
7. Cut across the grain into 2 to 3 mm strips with a very sharp knife, then the strips cut again into matchsticks. Kept COLD in the fridge while the rest is prepared.
8. The soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, garlic, crushed sesame seeds and spring onion stirred together in a small bowl.
9. Pear cut into fine matchsticks and kept in cold water with a squeeze of lemon so it does not brown, then drained and patted dry.
10. Two cold plates taken out and the pear arranged on them.
11. THE BEEF DRESSED NOW, folded through the dressing with chopsticks for no more than 20 seconds.
12. Piled onto the pear at once.
13. A hollow made in the top of each and a raw egg yolk slid in. Pepper over.
14. Taken to the table immediately and mixed by the person eating it. Raw beef and raw egg, so not for anyone who should avoid either.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes