Have you ever heard of KPop? It's South Korea's own brand of boy band & girl band pop music and over the last decade it has taken Japan (and the rest of Asia) by storm. In fact, there may be only one Korean thing that's more popular in Japan than KPop and that's this dish - bibimbap (meaning "mixed rice" in Korean).
What you see with a proper bibimbap isn't exactly what you get - although it looks like some fried vegetables and beef piled on top of a bowl of rice, it's a little more sophisticated than that. The vegetables are mostly raw and mixed with salt, sesame seeds, garlic and sesame oil to create a slightly piquant, rich flavour.
In Korea, this dish would be quite a lot more fiery, but in Japan, the accent is on less heat and a little more variety of flavour and sweetness. I used courgette, carrot, beansprouts and spinach as vegetables in this dish but there is a wide variety of vegetables you can use. The carrot and courgette are julienned and then salted - left for 10 minutes, then they are then given a good squeeze to remove excess liquid. The beansprouts and spinach are boiled for 1 minute before all four vegetables get their flavourings. I used minced beef with onion as a fifth topping, beef being the classic meat to eat with bibimbap. To make this a truly nourishing one bowl meal, I top my bibimbap with a fried egg. To finish, I add a spoonful of Korean bibimbap chilli paste (because even Japanese style bibimbap needs to give you a little fire in your belly!)
If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can view the Youtube tutorial by clicking Bibimbap and the written recipe here.
Happy cooking! Kurumi XXXX.
If you want to try something Korean but without the meat, you could check out my Kimchi Omurice recipe.