Made For Us

I’m obsessed with

BIBIMBAP.

If you’ve never heard of or seen this food before, you may want to expand  your Asian cuisine by adding Korean food to your normal restaurants that you travel to in order to satisfy the Far East craving.

When I lived in China for a year, eating at local Korean places were my favorite weekly treats.  Korean eateries offer a lot of free appetizers, or Banchan, while you wait for your food.  Many of these side dishes contain some kind of kimchi.  

I traveled to Seoul for a week while living in the Orient, and of course we ate my favorite Korean dish there, Bibimbap (though in China, they called it Ban Fan).  This dish consists of an extremely hot stone bowl that has been sitting in a fire oven.  A pile of rice is then put into the bowl and topped with many sauteed and seasoned vegetables, such as mushrooms, sprouts, zucchini or cucumber, carrots, etc.  Some strips of beef, or bulgogi, are also added.  To top it off an egg is cracked on top.  The piping hot bowl is then served as the consumer can swirl everything together to spread the creamy yolk around as the hot bowl cooks it quickly.  The sizzling bowl welcomes your addition of a little, or a lot, of Sriracha. 

Honestly, once my husband mentions the one Korean place we know of in Tulsa, aptly titled Korean Garden, or I see a photo of Bibimbap, or anything remotely close to the two events just mentioned happens, this dish is all I can think about for weeks…until we finally take the 30 minute drive to the Korean restaurant.

I dream about it.  I crave it so much around meal times that it almost inhibits me from eating other foods (I said almost).  It’s the only dish I’ve ever ordered from the Korean restaurant here, though I did have a few other dishes when living abroad.  I just can’t order anything else, because it fulfills all my wants and needs when it comes to Korean food.