Beef and Eggplant Pot Rice (Sotbap) with a Make-Ahead Seasoning Sauce

Ingredients in the recorded preparation

T = Korean rice spoon (about 1 tablespoon).

Pot rice

• 2 cups rice (1½ cups white rice + ½ cup sweet/glutinous rice)
• 2 cups water
• 1 T olive oil (optional)
• 2 T tsuyu (Japanese soy-based soup base)
• 200 g beef
• 2 eggplants
• A generous amount of chopped green onion or scallion
• 1 egg yolk
• Toasted sesame seeds

Beef marinade

• 2 T soy sauce, 1 T mirin, 1 T sugar, 1 T sesame oil, 1 T minced garlic, a pinch of black pepper

Seasoning sauce for the rice

• 2 T soy sauce, 2 T sesame oil, 1 T gochugaru (Korean chili flakes), 1 T mirin, 1 T tuna extract (chamchi-aek), 1 T corn syrup (mulyeot), ½ T minced garlic, 1 T sesame seeds, plenty of chopped green onion or scallion

White rice alone works too; a little sweet rice makes the pot rice pleasantly sticky. Use ground beef or thin shabu-shabu slices — the author used shabu-shabu beef.

Recorded cooking sequence

1. Rinse the 2 cups of rice well and let it rest drained (dry-soak) for at least 30 minutes. Pat the beef dry with paper towels, chop it finely, and toss it with the marinade. Let it sit briefly.
2. Wash the eggplants, trim the stems, halve them lengthwise, and cut into rough bite-size chunks.
3. In the pot you will cook the rice in, stir-fry the marinated beef over medium heat until well browned, then set it aside. In the same pot, stir-fry the eggplant over medium-high heat for 3 minutes and set it aside.

4. Add the soaked rice, the same amount of water (2 cups), the olive oil, and the tsuyu to the pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
5. When it boils, uncover and stir until the water settles down. Once the water is nearly absorbed, turn the heat to very low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes. (The author used level 2 on an induction cooktop.)
6. While the rice cooks, mix the seasoning sauce ingredients and stir in plenty of sliced green onion.
7. After 15 minutes, uncover and layer on the beef, the green onion, and then the eggplant. Turn off the heat, cover again, and let it steam for 10 minutes. Top with the egg yolk and sesame seeds.

Tips from the source

How to serve

Break the yolk and mix the rice, beef, and eggplant together. The rice is already seasoned, but mixed with the seasoning sauce it makes a satisfying one-bowl meal with no other side dishes needed. No serving count or nutrition figures are given in the source, so none are added here.