No pre-marinating or slicing meat ahead of time for this classic Korean beef dish. Just dump in the pot, and dinner ready in 15 minutes.

bulgogi on a round plate with chopsticks and salad — The classic beef dish that comes sizzling to your table at Korean restaurants is actually very easy to make at home with a few staple ingredients and help from the Asian meat counter.

Serve with steamed rice or cauliflower rice, sesame spinach, or even homemade kimchi.

For the vegetarians, you can serve up Korean BBQ mushrooms instead.

This dish is meant to be served QUICKLY using ingredients you hopefully already have sitting around the kitchen.

Bulgogi vs. Kalbi

Bulgogi is the Korean term for the thin sliced seasoned beef dish. It literally means “fire meat” and can be also be made with pork.

Not to be confused with kalbi, the grilled sliced short ribs with oblong shaped bones still attached. Kalbi means “rib” in Korean.

Both are seasoned with the similar ingredients, but bulgogi cooks much more quickly and is often less expensive than beef short ribs.

Korean bbq beef and onion with green onion on a blue plate — Too much onion? Sometimes we let the garnishes get carried away with green onion and white onion. Remove if you don’t care for them.

What we are NOT doing in this recipe

Pre-marinating meat – Might be nice, but we don’t have time
Slicing meat – Paper thin pre-sliced beef can be found in Asian supermarkets, where it is used commonly for hot pot or shabu shabu. If you can’t find pre-sliced meat, use ground beef.
Adding fruit – Many recipes will add some fresh grated pear or apple, but we added mirin instead because it can live in the pantry forever (and we really don’t feel like grating fresh fruit).

sliced beef, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil on a wood cutting board — Pre-sliced beef comes prepackaged at Asian grocery stores on styrofoam trays. For bulgogi, it is commonly seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil.

Must have ingredients

In addition to the beef, just a few simple ingredients make this dish sizzle:

Soy sauce
Sugar – cane sugar gives a clean sweet taste but any sweetener such as brown sugar or even honey will do
Garlic – Korean cuisine uses this aromatic heavily
Black pepper – another trademark ingredient that is necessary with beef

Nice to have ingredients (that we don’t have): fresh ginger and fresh pear or apple

Secret ingredient: We add mirin for fruitiness and sweetness.

If you don’t have mirin, you can sub with rice wine or dry sherry plus an additional teaspoon of sugar.

Korean bbq ground beef on a blue plate — If you can’t find pre-sliced meat, sub with ground beef. Some restaurants do this when they add it to *bibimbap* rice bowls or wrap in *kimbap* seaweed rice rolls.

What kind of beef?

Any type of thin sliced beef will work for this dish. Because it is sliced so thinly, it will cook quickly and remain tender.

Otherwise, ground beef will work in a pinch.

Ground Beef Option

close up of Korean bbq ground beef on cauliflower rice — Here it is served with cauliflower rice instead of regular grain rice for a low carb option. The filling could also work in fresh lettuce cups.

Time needed: 15 minutes.

Let’s make bulgogi the easy way

Chop vegetables
Slice the onion, mince garlic, and chop any of your other optional garnishes such as green onion.
Chop the beef
The beef should already be pre sliced, but a you’ll want it cut it roughly into more manageable pieces. Run your knife through it a few times.
Heat oil
Heat a thick bottomed pan to medium high heat and add the oil.
Add beef
Add seasoning
Right after you add the beef, you can go ahead and add the rest of the seasoning ingredients.
Stir fry
The sugar will make this burn easily. You will want to keep stirring and turning the beef just until the beef is cooked through and no longer pink. Remove from the pan.
Cook onion
Remove the beef from the pan, and add the sliced onion. It will take a minute or two to just start becoming translucent but still have some bite.
Mix
Add the beef back to the pot and just reheat through for 30 seconds.
Serve hot
Add your optional garnishes and serve piping hot!

Cost and Quantity

This recipe is for 1/2 pound of sliced beef that I bought for $8 at the Japanese supermarket (it’s pricier than other markets but I find the quality of the beef to be the best). It feeds 2 people with additional side dishes.

I’ll estimate the additional ingredients at a generous $2, bringing the total cost to $10 or $5 per person.

If you’re really hungry though and eat the whole 1/2 lb of beef yourself, that makes this dish $10 per person, which is still lower than the $15-$20 restaurants sell this for (in the San Francisco/Bay Area).

Helpful Tips

If you don’t have mirin, substitute rice wine or dry sherry plus 1 teaspoon of sugar. Or skip the wine all together and add an additional 1 tsp of sugar.
If you have fresh ginger on hand, add 1/2 tsp of grated ginger with the other seasoning ingredients.
If you have fresh pears or apples on hand, grate in 1 Tablespoon if you’re feeling adventurous.
If you are cooking more than a 1/2 lb of beef, work in batches. otherwise, the meat ends up stewing in its own juices and you’ll miss out on meat caramelization.
For a low carb option, wrap in lettuce cups instead or serve with cauliflower rice.

More easy Korean recipes

Quick Kimchi Pork Stir-Fry

7 Vegan Korean Recipes for Beginners

Easy Bulgogi Recipe (with ground beef option)