Slow Cooker Galbitang
Speed - 98%
Simplicity - 94%
Tastiness - 100%
97%
Yummy.
The beef ribs come out really moist and tender and the broth is so clean and aromatic, just the way Korean Galbitang should be. There are a few extra steps that you can do to preserve the clarity of the soup, mentioned in the recipe. This is a great winter soup to keep the whole family warm.
Ingredients
- 1 Kilo Beef Ribs
- 1 Piece Korean Radish peeled, cut into chunks
- 1 Pieces White Onion peeled, quartered
- 3 Stalks Leeks chopped into pieces
- 1 Bulb garlic cut in half
- 1 Pieces Ginger thumb sized, peeled, cut thinly
- 1 Liter Beef Stock
- Salt
- Starch Noodles pre-cooked
Instructions
- Soak beef ribs in cold water for 30 minutes to an hour.
- Blanch ribs in salted boiling water for 2 minutes.
- Wash blanched beef in running cold water.
- Add beef, vegetables, and aromatics, and stock in slow cooker and cook for 8 hours on low.
- Serve with starch noodles.
Want something comforting but relatively light? This Korean beef rib soup is a meal on its own without much of the richness you'd typically get from ingredients like cream or butter, which may get you too sluggish. The clean and aromatic flavors of this dish just leaves you feeling invigorated.
The clean flavored broth that characterizes Korean Galbitang relies primarily on the first two steps of this process.
First the beef ribs have to be soaked in cold water for about an hour. This will draw out any excess blood from the meat which may leak out and coagulate while cooking, rendering the soup dark and cloudy.
There is no other cut that can be substituted here. Those rib bones are essential for bringing flavor to the soup. Using shanks on the other hand, will make it too oily.
It would be a good time to prepare the other ingredients while the beef is soaking. Don't bother to cut them too small or too perfect as they would eventually melt off into the broth. They'll just be serving to flavor the soup.
You may want to cut the radish a bit chunkier though if you plan to serve them so they won't break down too much.
For those of you who may wonder what a Korean radish looks like, here's a picture. It's much stouter and rounder than the typical white radish. It also has a more mellow peppery flavor. This fact may come in handy if for availability reasons, you may have to substitute white radish in this recipe. Haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing like using half the quantity called for would be the right adjustment if using white radish. Using too much would definitely overpower the broth's subtle flavors.
After the beef has soaked for a good hour or so, they'll be blanched in salted boiling water. This will further extract those impurities out which you'll see as a dark foam on the surface of the liquid. Skim this off regularly to make the ribs easier to rinse after.
After rinsing the ribs clean under cold running water, put them in the pot together with the onions, ginger, leeks, and Korean radish, then add in the beef stock. As a standard, use about a cup of stock per person you intend to serve.
These ribs should be fork-tender after 8 hours in the slow cooker on a low setting. You may have to season the broth at this stage with salt to your liking. If seasoning with pepper, as some of you might like, use white pepper to preserve the broth's clarity. Though not necessary, we wouldn't want to waste our efforts of soaking and blanching these ribs just to ruin the clean broth in the end with specks of black pepper.
For today's recipe, I used the Gourmia SlowSmart. This is quite a big slow cooker, at 8.5 quarts, but I wanted to make extra. Soup always goes really fast in the winter, so I wanted to make the most of my time and save some soup for the rest of the week. Actually, I tend to make fresh noodles so they don't get soggy then add the noodles to the soup each day rather than store them in the broth.
This soup is typically served with Korean starch noodles which as you can see is perfectly clear as well. Some cooks, would add the dried noodles directly into the broth to cook. I'd like to pre-cook mine in a separate pot of water. The starch that'll leek out of them would make the broth really cloudy. Again, personal preference here.
Ingredients
- 1 Kilo Beef Ribs
- 1 Piece Korean Radish peeled, cut into chunks
- 1 Pieces White Onion peeled, quartered
- 3 Stalks Leeks chopped into pieces
- 1 Bulb garlic cut in half
- 1 Pieces Ginger thumb sized, peeled, cut thinly
- 1 Liter Beef Stock
- Salt
- Starch Noodles pre-cooked
Instructions
- Soak beef ribs in cold water for 30 minutes to an hour.
- Blanch ribs in salted boiling water for 2 minutes.
- Wash blanched beef in running cold water.
- Add beef, vegetables, and aromatics, and stock in slow cooker and cook for 8 hours on low.
- Serve with starch noodles.
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