Beef Bulgogi Sliders with Kimchi Slaw
Speed - 97%
Simplicity - 100%
Tastiness - 100%
99%
Yummy!
This is Korean Beef Bulgogi in a slider. The perfect pairing with the Kimchi slaw is genius! Using your slow cooker to make savory, flavor-packed beef is only obvious. But let's move away from the traditional shredded beef recipes and give it a bit of international flavor!
Ingredients
- 10 Pieces Slider Buns
Beef Bulgogi
- 3/4 Kilo Beef Roast or BBQ Steaks
- 3 Stalks Leeks rough chopped
- 1 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Tablespoons Soju
- 2 Tablespoons Sesame Oil
- 1 Tablespoons Black Pepper
- 1 Cups Beef Broth
Kimchi Slaw
- 1 Cup Cucumber julienne
- 1 Cup Carrots julienne
- 1 Cup White Radish julienne
- 1 Cup Scallions thinly sliced
Slaw Dressing
- 1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
- 1 Tablespoon Sesame Oil
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 1 Tablespoon Gochujang
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients for bulgogi in a slow cooker and set on low for 8 hours.
- Prepare the slaw. Whisk all ingredients for the dressing in a bowl and toss in the vegetables. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
- Shred cooked beef.
- Assemble the sliders.
Bulgogi is one of Korea's most popular dishes, usually of beef sirloin, thinly sliced, marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and peppercorns, then finished off on the grill. In this adaptation for the slow cooker though, I deliberately opted to use chuck bbq steaks for a few practical reasons.
First, the meat will be braised, long and slow, and will certainly end up tender anyway. So why pay more for a premium cut? Next, a tougher cut comes from the animal's more used muscle groups, resulting into more beef flavor due to more blood circulation and connective tissue. Also, it had a good amount of fat marbling, and sections of tendon that would yield a much more moist and tender cooked piece of meat.
Finally, I wanted fairly thin steak slices, about an inch thick, to expose more meat surface area to the flavors of my cooking liquid. These are my preferences though. You may choose from sirloin, brisket, chuck, top round, or rib for this recipe. It would definitely work with any cut of beef.
For most of my crockpot-adapted recipes, I usually start meat with a light dusting of flour and a good sear to achieve a good brown color on the finished product. No need for this recipe knowing that it will cook in a good amount of soy sauce. This should give it a deep brown color without the need for searing.
Since this is a slow cooker recipe, I always try to recommend a slow cooker that I reviewed recently. One that really impressed me was the Frigidaire 7-quart Professional in stainless steel. It's quite the stylish slow cooker, and it's fully programmable so everything is ‘set and forget'. However, the 7 quart capacity might be bigger than what the average person will need, so if that's the case, you should also check out the Cuisinart 3.5 quart programmable cooker.
You may have noticed that I've used a cup of soy sauce in this recipe, which may seem too much. Bear in mind that we will be serving this meat on buns without any sauce so we better pack in strong flavor into the meat early on.
This bulgogi is really that simple. Once all ingredients are in the crockpot, you're pretty much done. This would be the perfect time to start working on the slaw, giving it time to develop its flavors. Since we're working on Korean Bulgogi sliders, what better slaw to top them off than a Kimchi-inspired one?
We'll start off with the dressing, which basically contains similar flavors from the beef's cooking liquid with the addition of Gochujang, a Korean fermented chili and soybean condiment. It will give our slaw the heat, pungency, and tang to balance out the beef's richness. I'm a huge fan of Gochujang and even eat it on my eggs in the morning sometimes. It's got quite a strong flavor and a bit of a dry texture despite being a sauce, so I like to mix it with ketchup.
You may tweak the proportions on this to your taste. Add in more honey if you like yours sweeter, more gochujang for more heat, or more sesame oil for a nuttier aroma.
I also chose white radish, cucumbers, scallions, and carrots for the components of my slaw which is what you would normally find in those store-bought kimchi bottles. It will add texture and freshness to our Bulgogi sliders.
After 6-8 hours, our beef will certainly come out fork tender. I chose to shred it instead of slicing to break down the structure further, giving the sliders a softer bite. You may want to ladle some of the cooking liquid on to the shredded meat to keep it moist though.
And it's done! All that's left is assembling the sandwiches. No rules here. Pack in as little or as much meat as you wish.
These ended up really juicy and well-spiced. I ate mine with some Sri-racha mayo, which is just basically a mixture of those two condiments.
Ingredients
- 10 Pieces Slider Buns
Beef Bulgogi
- 3/4 Kilo Beef Roast or BBQ Steaks
- 3 Stalks Leeks rough chopped
- 1 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Tablespoons Soju
- 2 Tablespoons Sesame Oil
- 1 Tablespoons Black Pepper
- 1 Cups Beef Broth
Kimchi Slaw
- 1 Cup Cucumber julienne
- 1 Cup Carrots julienne
- 1 Cup White Radish julienne
- 1 Cup Scallions thinly sliced
Slaw Dressing
- 1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
- 1 Tablespoon Sesame Oil
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 1 Tablespoon Gochujang
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients for bulgogi in a slow cooker and set on low for 8 hours.
- Prepare the slaw. Whisk all ingredients for the dressing in a bowl and toss in the vegetables. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
- Shred cooked beef.
- Assemble the sliders.
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