Chicken Bulgogi, Fast and Easy Recipe for Weeknights

The best dishes for busy weeknights are the ones, like Korean Chicken Bulgogi, you can make by throwing a bunch of super flavorful marinade ingredients into a bowl, and letting them do their magic on chicken until you're ready to cook in about 10 minutes. Subtly sweet, garlicky, gingery and full of umami, Chicken Bulgogi is a fast and easy staple. Shall we?

Explore More

• What is Chicken Bulgogi?
• Health and Dietary Considerations of Chicken Bulgogi
• Ingredients You Need for Chicken Bulgogi
• What Kind of Chicken for Bulgogi?
• How to Store Prepped or Leftover Chicken Bulgogi
• Korean Chicken Bulgogi Recipe
• Food for Afterthoughts

What is Chicken Bulgogi?

Chicken Bulgogi, aka "dak bulgogi" in Korean, is a dish of boneless chicken pieces marinated in a a subtly sweet, garlicky, gingery soy-based sauce, nearly identical to the marinade for bulgogi made with thinly sliced ribeye and galbi made with short ribs. Then, Chicken Bulgogi is grilled or pan-seared quickly over high heat.

Here's your Korean language lesson of the week:

When broken down, “bulgogi” 불고기 translates to “fire meat” where bul 불 means “fire,” and gogi 고기 means “meat.”

Add dak 닭, meaning “chicken,” and you get Dak Bulgogi 닭불고기, or literally "chicken fire meat.”

Health and Dietary Considerations of Chicken Bulgogi

As printed, this Chicken Bulgogi recipe is:

• dairy-free
• gluten-free
• refined sugar-free

Depending on the piece of chicken, one serving of this dish can have anywhere from 38 to 40 grams of protein!

Ingredients You Need for Chicken Bulgogi

Refrigerator/fresh ingredients:

• Chicken thighs, boneless skinless, ½ pounds
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Green onions

Pantry/dry ingredients:

• Chicken stock or bone broth
• Tamari or soy sauce
• Sake or Mirim, Korean seasoned rice wine for cooking
• Maple syrup
• Sesame oil
• Sesame seeds
• Avocado oil or other neutral oil for cooking

We are using the more flavorful cut from chicken, thighs.

Easiest is to buy them already boneless and skinless. You can also buy bone-in, skin-on thighs and break them down yourself.

How many Chicken Thighs are in 1 Pound?

One boneless, skinless chicken thigh averages 3.5 ounces.

In 1 pound (16 ounces), there are 4-5 chicken thighs.

For this recipe, you need 1½ pounds (24 ounces), or 6-8 thighs.

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

Tamari or soy sauce. Tamari is Japanese soy sauce. Regular soy sauce contains wheat, but tamari has little or no wheat. Therefore, tamari can be gluten-free, though not always. If you eat gluten-free, make sure to read labels. I use this organic gluten-free tamari. This brand is also great, though might be a little harder to find in-store.

Mirim or Sake. 미림, mirim, is Korean cooking wine, similar to mirin, Japanese cooking wine. Don't use aji-mirin; read the label to make sure there is no added sugar or corn syrup. If you don't have mirim, use sake.

Maple Syrup. I use this organic maple syrup. If you like the deep dark color in a braised chicken dish, use a dark amber grade A maple syrup. You can use honey as a substitute.

Chicken stock. I will always recommend that you make your own bone broth, but like the Barefoot Contessa says, store-bought is fine. Read the ingredients list and find one with chicken as the first ingredient, and without added sugar.

Sesame oil. Use toasted, not regular, sesame oil. Toasted sesame oil is dark brown and is used as a finishing oil, not as a cooking oil. This is the Japanese brand that everyone and their mothers' have been using for years. You can usually find organic like this one in natural and higher end grocery stores.

Sesame seeds. Use toasted sesame seeds.

Avocado Oil. Avocado oil is a neutral flavored oil with a high smoked point that's generally a little less processed than other refined oils like conventional seed oils. This is the brand I use. You can use any neutral oil with a high smoked point.

How to Store Prepped or Leftover Chicken Bulgogi

Refrigerator. You can keep cooked Chicken Bulgogi in the refrigerator for 2 days.

Freezer. You can freeze Chicken Bulgogi for about 3 months. The way that works best for how I maintain my freezer is portioning the Chicken Bulgogi directly into freezer-safe quart-sized bags, squeezing out all the air, sealing, and laying flat in the freezer until it freezes. Then I stand the bag or multiple bags up and line them up like thin books on a bookshelf. If you're looking to reduce single-use plastic, these are re-usable ziptop bags.

What to Serve with Chicken Bulgogi

It wouldn't be a Korean dish if you didn't serve fluffy steamed rice and some kind of kimchi along with it. Pile pieces of Chicken Bulgogi over a bowl of rice that will soak up the juices, and serve with any of these alongside:

• Oi Muchim, Korean Spicy Cucumbers
• Spicy Cucumber Salad with Avocado
• Din Tai Fung Dupe Cucumbers
• Korean Sesame Spinach

To Make Chicken Bulgogi an Occasion

Just like the big Korean BBQ at restaurants, you can turn Chicken Bulgogi into a Ssam Party by doubling the recipe, then adding banchan, leafy lettuces and Ssam Jang for wrapping, and some other noodle-y, stew-y side dish to the table! Here are some menu starters:

The Best Banchan:

• Homemade Kimchi
• Korean Spicy Cucumber, Oi Muchim
• Korean Carrot Salad
• Korean Pickled Radish, Chicken Mu

Favorite Korean Side Dishes:

• Jap Chae
• Spicy Jap Chae
• Spicy Soba Noodle Salad, Jaengban Guksu
• Korean Mandu

Food for Afterthoughts

It has come to my attention in recent weeks that I spend entirely too much time on The Delicious Life.

Yes, I do spend too much time on The Delicious Life, but I actually need to finish my sentence.

It has come to my attention in recent weeks that I spend entirely too much time on The Delicious Life uselessly writing about myself and my utterly uninteresting unemployed life.

Obviously, I didn’t come to this realization myself, as I was far too absorbed in gazing at my muffin-crumb-filled navel that is rapidly disappearing into some rather unbecoming “folds.” I have received a few comments and other such unsavory, though somewhat amusing, emails suggesting that I should write about things that are appropriate for a food blog. Like food.

Ouch. That hurts.

Blog it Out

So after my initial I'm slightly-offended, sarcastic yet silent non-responsive response (see above), I phased into my second reaction. I stomped around my apartment with indignation in high heels and a frilly apron, waving a very large balloon whisk in large air-figure-eights around my head that, if not for being physiologically attached to my neck, would have flown off into the corner like yesterday's wilted Iceberg for how violently I was jerking it back and forth, side to side. I was shouting in an inner histrionic monologue born of a drag queen latifah.

"Food blog? Damn right, this is a food blog! This is my blog. Mine! And I can write about what ever the !#$%^& @$%!!& I want to! Unh unh, honey. Ain't nobody telling this Delicious princess what to write on my food blog! Mmmmm hm. That's right. Delicious this!" And I was punctuating each statement with a righteous twirl of my whisk.

Very. Convincing.

Then I sat down at my laptop and begrudgingly realized that they were right. I was just being arrogant and defensive. This is a food blog. I should write about food. I should provide valuable, educational information about food, its history, its popular preparations and maybe even some of its lesser known serving suggestions, list some fun facts about it, spit out some nutritional data, etc. etc. etc. You know, like all those fabulously informative and entertaining shows on the Food Network. I should be like Jim O'Connor on The Secret Life of! (I really shouldn't make fun because Jim's kinda cute.)

How about I just write about bulgogi?

Blog-gogi

Bulgogi in it most popular form is thinly sliced boneless beef, the slightly more refined sibling of galbi, which are the fatty, meaty, thick short ribs. Both meats are marinated in a sweet, soy-sesame seasoning, then grilled.

Though galbi is always made from either regular- or cross-cut short ribs, from the literal translation of the word "galbi" is "rib," bulgogi beef can be any tender boneless cut that allows for thin slices - ribeye, flank steak, etc. Bulgogi also doesn't always have to be grilled over a fire, as the name would suggest, but can be pan-fried or sautéed, or set under a broiler, which is basically inverse grilling, right?

But since "bulgogi" translates to "fire meat," technically, you could use any sort of meat, not just beef. Koreans make "dae-jee bulgogi," which is thinly sliced pork marinated in a fairly spicy seasoning then grilled. Back in Berkeley, I used to schlep into Steve's Barbecue and order combo-numbah-two daeeeeee-jee-bool-gogi! about once a week. Maybe more often if we were in finals.

Galbee and regular bool gogi were boring in their salty, overly sweet marinade, but the dae-jee bool gogi, with its spicy kick from goh-choo-jahng (Korean hot pepper paste) and goh-choo-ga-roo (Korean red pepper powder) was awesome.

For your reference, dae-jee=pig, therefore dae-jee + bool gogi = pig fire meat.

*whoa* "Pig fire meat" sounds sooooo much better.

Dak Meat

Because chicken is meat, then bulgogi can also be made from chicken! It is dak bulgogi. The marinade for dak bulgogi is very similar to its beefier cousins', with only a slight adjustment to the ratios of soy sauce, salt, and sesame oil to account for the much blander meat, and potential dryness of chicken. I haven't seen dak bulgogi much on menus in Korean restaurants. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it, so maybe I am making this all up as we go along. But I think I've been pretty convincing thus far, yes?

Actually, I have seen what would be considered dak bulgogi, but for some reason, Koreans want to call it something else like dahk gui, "gooey" referring to it being grilled. Don't be fooled. It's really dak bulgogi.

Bulgogi doesn't work for fish. Fish is not meat. Next!

So I made chicken bulgogi, as part of my personal Seoul Searching efforts, very long on the heels of dak jjim, a Korean braised chicken stew. The Dak Bulgogi tasted alright, except that I should know by now that whenever I think I've added enough heat (spice), I should add more. I guess that's what kimchi is for.

I feel so Korean now.