Korean Ground Beef Bowl, Bulgogi Flavor in a Fraction of the Time

So, you're craving Korean BBQ but you have neither the time and energy to marinate the beef and fire up the grill, nor funds for a good ribeye. A Korean Beef Bowl is about to be your almost-instant best friend, made with the same super flavorful seasoning ingredients, but with fast-cooking ground beef that can be served in bowls with rice and vegetables. Shall we?

Explore More

• What is a Korean Beef Bowl?
• Ingredients You Need for Korean Beef Bowl
• What Kind of Meat for Korean Beef Bowl?
• Can You Prep Korean Beef Bowls in Advance?
• How to Store Leftover Cooked Korean Beef Bowl
• Health and Dietary Considerations of Korean Beef Bowl
• Best Korean Beef Dishes
• Korean Beef Bowl Recipe

What is a Korean Beef Bowl?

Korean Beef Bowls are based on bulgogi, which a dish of thin slices of steak, marinated in a subtly sweet, garlicky, gingery soy-based sauce, then grilled or pan-seared quickly over high heat.

Ground beef is a massive shortcut and budget-friendly way to getting the same flavor without having to slice more expensive cuts of beef like steak and waiting for it to marinate. So it's great for a quick, easy meal at home.

Ingredients You Need for Korean Beef Bowl

Refrigerator/fresh ingredients:

• Ground beef, 1 pound
• Garlic, 2-3 cloves chopped
• Onion, ½
• Ginger, 1 teaspoon fresh grated
• Green onion, 1 stalk

Pantry/dry ingredients:

• Tamari or soy sauce
• Maple syrup (or other sweetener of your choice)
• Sesame oil
• Avocado oil or other neutral oil for cooking
• Toasted sesame seeds for garnish

The recipe is for the Korean seasoned ground beef. To make it into a bowl, add steamed white rice and your favorite side vegetable.

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.

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.

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.

Can You Prep Korean Beef Bowls in Advance?

Yes! Korean Beef Bowls are actually GREAT to make in advance, making them perfect for easy meal prep. There are two ways:

Fully cook the Korean Beef in advance. Cook the recipe completely through, then store the cooked Korean Beef in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to three days.

Marinate the Korean Beef. Make the seasoning. Pour over the ground beef and onions in a glass storage container with an air-tight lid, lightly massaging the seasoning into the ground beef as you would do if you were seasoning for burgers. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, and cook as directed in the recipe when you're ready to eat.

How to Store Leftover Cooked Korean Beef Bowl

Refrigerator. You can keep cooked Korean Beef in the refrigerator for 3 days.

Freezer. You can freeze cooked Korean Beef for about 1 month. The way that works best for how I maintain my freezer is portioning the Korean Beef 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.

Health and Dietary Considerations of Korean Beef Bowl

As printed, this Korean Beef Bowl recipe is:

• dairy-free
• gluten-free when using gluten-free soy sauce or tamari
• refined sugar-free

Obviously, beef is a protein powerhouse. Depending on the lean/fat ration of the ground beef, one serving of this dish can have anywhere from 26 to 29 grams of protein!

Best Korean Beef Dishes

What to Serve with Korean Beef Bowls

Korean people serve bulgogi with steamed white rice and an array of banchan, all the marinated, fermented, and otherwise fabulously flavorful small side dishes like kimchi , as a meal. For this Korean Beef Bowl version, pile the Korean ground beef over steamed rice and one or two vegetables or banchan right in the bowl. Here are some of the best:

• Sesame Broccoli, to keep it simple and healthy
• Oi Muchim, Korean Spicy Cucumbers
• Spicy Cucumber Salad with Avocado
• Din Tai Fung Dupe Cucumbers
• Korean Sesame Spinach

Though the beef is seasoned enough, if you're a sauce person and will add a sauce or condiment to a dish regardless, try adding a generous dollop of spicy Bibimbap Sauce made with Korean gochujang. At this point your bowl is halfway to being bibimbap!

If you know Korean food, for goodness' sake, use your favorite bulgogi/galbi marinade, but if you're not, this is a good starting point, though I wouldn't turn around and use this for real bulgogi because it has no sugar.

Food for Afterthoughts

I have an odd love/hate/hate/love/hate/hate/hate relationship with the month of June. That is, of course, assuming one can even have a relationship with a month. Really, one can't - or can one? - especially when one always writes about oneself in the generic first/second person singular. There is a common conception that when one does that, it is a sign. A sign of what, one does not know, but it is a sign.

June makes me think of...the girl who picks the bad crab. Beaver's mom. Gloomy days that burn into 90 degree margarita afternoons. The longest day of the year.

June makes me think of the annoyingly rhymeful Hallmarkism, Dads and Grads! Don't forget Dads and Grads! Don't forget to buy the two worst gifts in the world, neckties and monogrammed pens! I don't know how guys feel about ties, but please. Please! I was a graduate far too many times than is healthy for the normal person. I have way too many pens. Yes, I love them all, especially because they were well-meant gifts from people I love. Yes, I love every single pen that reminds me of who I am whenever I forget my own name. Oh crap. What's my name, again? Oh, right! It's Sarah, just like it's imprinted here in 14 karat gold filigree calligraphic olde English Shakespeare script for $10.99 plus $1.99 per letter on my pen! Sarah. Thank Gaaawd I have this pen or else I'd never remember who I am.

Just give me Uniball Micro (my favorite pen) and the cash instead, okay?

June makes me think of weddings. *spit* I will not go into how I feel about weddings today because I am sure my feelings about weddings will be made bridal registry Waterford Crystal clear in a few days when I have to go to one that I wasn't even invited to. I am not a Wedding Crasher. That would be way too much fun. I am worse. I am Wedding Second String. Just wait. It'll be fun.

June makes me think of lots of things, the last of which I care not to bring up, but I will. I must, because it is in the title of this post, and once it's in the permalink of the post, you can never go back!

June makes me think of...

*gag*

June makes me think of...my birthday.

I actually do love June. It's the first month of vacation from school. It's the first month of summer. Despite the necktie- and mortar-and-pestle-shaped ice cream cakes, I actually do love celebrating Dads and Grads with backyard barbecues and pool parties. I don't like the wedding part, but we'll just ignore that. Unfortunately, I have a melodramatic, hateful, wishful, painful, pathetic moment in June called my birthday that ruins the whole month. My birthday! My god**n mother effin'. Day. Of. Birth. June 21, 19..uh...19, um...1984. Okay...next paragraph, quick!

And that is why I love/hate the month of June. I love June, but it's ruined by my birthday. I love/hate my birthday.

I love birthdays. I love celebrating the day that someone is introduced into his or her crazy delicious life, and perhaps, when appropriate, celebrating that he or she has survived another crazy delicious year. Cake. Presents. Party! I love birthday parties. Okay, and I luuuuurve birthday cake. Even the kind from the grocery store bakery.

The sad thing is, as much as I love celebrating other people's birthdays, I have a hard time celebrating my own birthday. I always feel...weird. I feel weird about asking other people to celebrate little ol' me. Maybe it's a girl thing. Or an Asian thing. Or a first-born, Asian girl thing. No one should pay that much attention to me, right?

And yet, I feel that way, but I don't. I just think I feel that way. Because why else would I post about it on a blog that my hundred million adoring fans will read?!?! Of course I want to draw attention to myself! It's my birthday everyone!

Clearly, I haven't therapeutically dealt with my real feelings about my birthday yet.

As I was growing up, no one really cared about my birthday. A June birthday is a tough thing for school-aged children. By the time my late-June birthday came around, we were already out of school for vacation, so there would never be a party in homeroom. Okay, there were some years when I went to school somewhere that had school in session until late late June, but that is rare. I think I got a birthday party in school maybe once. Or maybe it was more than once an I have selectively blocked it out of my memory because Mom's bringing oriental rice cakes instead of normal cupcakes to share with my Wonder White class was just too traumatizing an experience.

But since school is out, a June birthday is awesome! You can have a birthday party! With a piñata!

No. You see, there's this thing called "camp." All my friends went to "camp." I however, did not go to camp, because I don't know. It was never an option. I do know. I did, indeed, go to camp. I went to the UTSA (University of Texas, San Antonio) computer camp. My Dad never let us play the piano because we had to learn to type, and we never went to normal by-the-lake-weave-God's-Eyes-carve-magnets-out-of-tree-bark camp. We went to computer camp. That kind of makes me want to cry for how sad it is. But, I will save that hour of therapy for another day. The point is that since all my little friends were away at camp, I had a birthday party with...my baby sisters. Geez, it is all coming out now, isn't it?

And of course, there is the aging part of birthdays, which never bothered me before. Never. I used to not care. Seriously. I had the Fountain-of-Youth syndrome. Part of it is that I didn't look older. I am Asian. I already look ten years too young, so "aging" was a joke. When I turned 30 *ahemcoughcough* a few years ago, I joked about being 29 forever. I joked about not wanting to reveal my age, the way some women refuse to reveal their age after 30, because all women are supposed to care about their age, right? I joked, but I didn't really mean it because I never felt old. I never felt like I was a
ging.

But this year, I feel it. I feel the aging. I mean I never felt it before, but this time, it's like doing it for the first time. I feel it. It hurts.

*sigh* I am old. And I look old.

Oh well. What do you do? You certainly can't fight time. You can fight The Time, if you throw on some shoulder pads and mousse you hair into a flock of seagulls with a gheri curl, but you cannot fight time.

So I focus my attention on those other things in June. Father's Day, graduations, other birthdays, all of which will eventually lead to one thing: barbecue. And that is where I will unveil my Korean Beef Bowl.

Oh well. I will enjoy my Korean Beef Bowl at home. Maybe on my birthday.

God, I hate June.