Jang-jorim

Jorim is a common method to make Banchan(small side dishes) in Korea. The basic concept of Jorim is to cook the meats or vegetables in sweet and salty liquid until most of the liquid evaporates while main ingredients absorb some of the liquid during evarporation. The final result is sweet and salty with shiny look with condensed flavor.

Jang-jorim was one of my favorite Doshirak (aka Bento) dish. Jang-jorinm is a type of jorim using meats. When I was young, my grandma used to make a big batch of Jang-jorim for us, and kept it in a big container. She shredded the meat each time just right before we ate. The eggs (she used quail eggs) were often more appreciated than meat. Now I wonder how she shelled all the quail eggs, it is a painful job!

You can use any kind of meats to make Jang-jorim(preferably lean part). The most commonly used part is Flank steak or brisket. I prefer flank steak because of shorter cooking time and flavor. Pork tenderloin would be also a good choice.

This is sweet, salty and spicy Jang-jorim.

ingredients for Beef Jang-jorim

to boil

1.5-2 lb flank steak

4 cup water

1 tsp whole black peppercorns

1 bay leave (optional)

1/2 onion /no need to chop

3 scallion/ no need to chop

3 garlic cloves

to make jorim

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup mirin (seasoned rice wine)

2 Tbsp sugar

3 dried red peppers

roasted garlic (optional)

soft boiled eggs (optional)

2cup of reserved boiling liquid

to make

Prepare the meat: submerge the meat in the plenty of water for 1 hour or the meat turn pale color. The purpose of doing this is to remove blood form meat to make the clean broth. Discard water and cut the meat to big 3 inch height pieces, against grain. Don't worry about the width at all. In a big pot (I used pressure cooker), put the meat pieces and the rest of boiling ingredients. Cover and bring it up to boil on high heat. Once it boils, turn down the heat to medium and cook for 1 1/2 hours or so until the meat becomes very tender and almost falling apart, still covered. If you use pressure cooker, cook for 30 minutes after building pressure. Leave the meat in its own broth until cooled down. Take the meats out carefully (otherwise the meat will fall apart), keep it warm and tightly covered (otherwise it will be dried out quickly). Sieve the broth, skim all the fat from broth. (you can leave the broth in the refrigerator to solidify the fat part) In a medium sized pot, put the meat pieced with 2 cups (or more as needed) the reserved broth and the rest of Jorim ingredients. Cook to Jorim,uncovered, on medium -high heat, basting the liquid with spoon until half of the liquid gets evaporated. ( it usually takes 10-15 minutes.) If you use eggs and roasted garlic, put them into the pot 5 miuntes before finishing Jorim. In this way, soft boiled eggs will be perfect hard boiled eggs and roasted garlic will not turn mushy. Remove any foams and fat from the sauce. Cool down, and move it to a deep container(to make the meat covered with sauce) cover tightly. Keep it in the refrigerator. When you are ready to eat, shred just right amount of meat you need. Pour the sauce over it. Serve with rice.

You can keep jangjorim in the refrigerator for up to a week. I recommend to microwave for 10-15 second before serving.