Carla Makes Pork Shoulder Steaks

Mm!

[quirky music]

Mm! Wow!

Mm-hm! Mm-hm!

All the way.

[quirky music]

Mm.

Wow! Wow.

It's so much sesame.

It's so much sesame.

Mm!

Mm-hm. Mm-hm!

Basically the best recipe we ever ran, right?

This is it. This is it.

So good. Power.

Power move,

and it's so much salt.

Yeah, and so much garlic.

Truly.

All right, another bite.

Another wrap for me.

[quirky music]

Mm!

Mm! Wow.

[quirky music]

[laughs]

All right, so sometimes I know a lot

of people think I have a dream job,

but sometimes at your dream job, you get

to report your dream story,

and July of 2014 was one of those times

when I pitched

and then got assigned a story about Korean grilling,

which is some of my favorite food to eat.

The recipe I'm doing today

is a gochujang marinated pork shoulder steak

that I learned from Rachel Yang, who's a chef in Seattle,

and when I met her

she totally blew my mind

because until that moment, I did not know

that pork shoulder, which I always though was a cut

that you had to

braise or slow roast or cook

for a really long amount of time,

could be marinated and grilled very, very quickly

and served kind of juicy and pink inside.

So, the first thing you have to do

is not buy a pork chop.

Pork chops are cut from the loin with the rib,

and they're really, really lean.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Fat is flavor.

So, what you need to do is go talk

to you butcher for a minute, and ask him or her to cut you

some one inch thick boneless pork shoulder steaks,

and you can tell just by looking at these cuts

how incredibly well-marbled they are.

So, get behind the pork shoulder steak,

and then get behind this Korean marinade.

It's, like, all of the things, right?

You can have sweetness or sweetness in the mirin

and in the sake in this,

but there's also these very pungent strong flavors

from the garlic and from the gochujang,

which is fermented red pepper paste.

It's hot,

but it's tangy, and it's pungent.

Oil, that's vegetable oil.

This fresh ginger,

heat, spicy, but also

peppery?

Gingery, it's so fresh.

It's so zingy.

That's mirin.

It's got a lot of sweetness.

It's got a little bit of tanginess,

and this is sake, and if you don't have sake

or aren't cooking with it, honestly, I would just use water.

It won't have the sweetness.

One of the things I learned from her was that

the more flavorful and pungent

and concentrated the marinade itself is,

the shorter amount of time you actually need

to marinate the meat.

I hit the on-off button at the same...

All right.

[blender churns]

[blender shuts off]

The other thing with this marinade is

to reserve

I'm just gonna use one of the ones I used.

A quarter cup,

and that's gonna be for basting.

It's just keeping some of the marinade separate

so that it doesn't have

the meat juices all over it,

and that way you can baste throughout.

All right, so now this pork,

with my marinade already set aside,

is going right

in here.

I'm turning to cover.

I just looked at the original recipe,

and it said to chill it

while it marinates for

two hours.

Thinking about that now, five years later,

I would leave it at room temperature for those two hours.

There's so much going on here.

I don't think there's any problem with doing that,

and I think you could marinate it even longer

if you wanted to.

If you wanna go past two hours, pop it in the fridge.

But of course, because

we're in the magical Bon Appétit Test Kitchen,

I have one that's already marinated.

Ta-dah! [shimmery bells ring]

All right, we're gonna take this over to the grill,

and it hit with some hot, hot heat.

Two things to keep into consideration.

It's loud over there, but I'll be yelling about this

when we're there.

There's a good amount of sugar in this marinade.

There's sugar in the gochujang.

There's sugar in the sake.

There's sugar in the mirin.

There's sugar in the ginger, frankly.

So, you're risk of burning exists,

and it may be a little bit more pronounced than usual.

I wanna use that to my advantage because I really do want

that charring and that nice flavor.

Just think about that,

while we're over yonder.

And then straight out of the marinade.

You're going to get some flare-ups.

You're gonna get flare-ups

because as the fat renders then it hits the flame.

It makes fire.

That's your flare-up.

So, my rule of thumb is to turn fattier cuts like this,

and this true whether you're cooking a beef steak

or a pork steak, to turn it frequently regardless,

but definitely turn it anytime you see a flare-up.

So, I just saw a little flare-up happening right there.

That's a great sign.

It means the fat is starting to melt.

It's hitting the fire below.

It's flaring up,

and if I'm going to take my own advice,

I will be turning now,

and then once I've got it on the second side...

Also, embrace the char.

Don't be alarmed by the dark

that dark color.

I can go ahead and throw a little bit more marinade

on the side that had been

closest to the grill.

So, this should take about eight minutes.

This is an easy one to scale up to.

I think that there was enough marinade there

that if you wanted to

use twice as much meat, you would have plenty

of marinade to go around.

These are starting to look really good.

I'm into kind of a more even distribution of the charring,

and I'm almost at the bottom of the amount of marinade

that was set aside.

This looks like that I've got a lot of nice charred spots,

but the parts that aren't charred are really nicely browned.

We have this guy.

Little pressy press.

Mm-hm.

Delicious!

So, it's springing back.

It's not well-done because it's still got some bounce to it.

A well-done steak will just

You'll press it and it'll just

be cardboard pushing back at you.

But those took just about eight minutes, which is

exactly how long the recipe said they were gonna take,

and now they do need to rest,

which will give us time to get a couple sauces ready.

[quirky music]

With bread, or no bread?

No bread.

No, God no.

Oh my God. It's getting warm.

[Carla] Oh my god, I can't I ate a bowl of pasta today!

[laughs]

It's island season.

[quirky music]

So while this is resting,

I'm gonna get a sauce ready.

The sauce is from another chef

who I got to meet on this trip.

This was the hey-day!

I went to Seattle to cook with Rachel,

and then I flew to Chicago, and I cooked

with Ed Kim from Mott Street,

and he showed me this ssäm sauce,

and it has four ingredients,

one of which is gochujang,

and the other one is doenjang, which is made from miso,

so it's a fermented soy bean paste,

and then to go into that I have a

good old jalapeño.

I'm gonna finely chop.

It's like, yes, there's spiciness,

but there's also a good amount of sugar.

I mean, back in the day, I was, like, wow.

I got on a plane.

I was gone for a week.

I went to five cities.

Didn't to deal with this brouhaha.

This is why I love to cook and why I love cooking

and why I love

being able to talk to chefs.

The amount of information that other people have given me

that have made me

a better cook and a more informed human,

didn't get that from books.

I got that from going to talk to people.

It's like the freakin' greatest thing in the world.

All right.

Shallot,

jalapeño,

[taps]

gochujang. [taps]

All right, so this sauce will get a little bit better

as it sits.

The cue that Chef Ed gave me when I was with him was

kind of like the consistency of blue cheese dressing,

and I just feel like this is a little bit tight.

Very delicious.

A little dab will do ya.

That looks great to me.

Okay,

done.

[Cameraman] And that's when we roll

That's

[Cameraman] [makes sounds with tongue] the sticker

that says Party Time. Party time!

All right, now this obviously the best part

of the whole thing, which is when you get

to make your

ssäm wrapper.

You could just eat the pork steak.

That's totally fine, but my favorite part

of Korean grilling and eating Korean-grilled food

is all of the other stuff that goes with it,

so we're gonna make a little wrapper.

One of the people that I interviewed,

and I can't remember who it was now,

so I can't quote him or her,

but said that one of the best things that can happen

to you in your life is

that someone else will make a ssäm for you,

and it will be that perfect bite

that they actually

didn't make for themselves but made for you,

and since I have to go to a meeting,

that might end up being what actually happens here.

I'm trying to find the grain,

but I'm not gonna be crazy about it.

Just thin slices

since you're not using a fork and knife in this.

Yum.

Oh my God, I love pork shoulder so much.

Okay, little bit of ssäm sauce.

A little

garlic.

This is Rachel's ssäm.

It's like she's making it for me.

Little jalapeño.

I'm gonna just add one other thing, which is

sesame oil that has salt and pepper mixed into it.

Just a little bit.

And, I was so concerned

with what's allowed, what you should put in,

what you can put in, but really, this should just be

delicious to you.

I feel like I'm supposed to give this to someone now

that I said the perfect ssäm

[Cameraman] is one you make for You've got

Chris, Christina, But I'm not

[Cameraman] Molly, Jesse

Mm!

[Cameraman] You're for yourself

there you go Mm! [laughs]

Mm!

Mm!

You taste this.

This is just the best thing you've ever had today.

You're not a raw garlic person though, really?

Kind of, yeah. Really?

[Carla] This? Yeah.

[Carla] Yeah of course. Yeah, right!

Garlic with other flavors Sure, I took it

It was in, it was out.

It was in then I took it back out again.

Mm. I don't wanna

turn your stomach

you know what I mean? Mm

That's the perilla. Perilla? Oh.

Would you make me

another one right now Yeah [laughs].

before you make one for anybody else?

[keyboard riffs]

How was the amount of pork in that, was good, right?

Not too much.

You don't have to take one bite,

but you're not making a burrito.

That was another thing that Carla, I'm crying.

[Carla] I'm so happy. It's so good!

[Carla] This is not an act. [whispers] I know.

[keyboard riffs]

You know, I have to go to a meeting, literally.

This is so upsetting.

I'm glad I had those two special bites

and a very special moment with Chris Morocco.

Jesse, so here's the thing. Hello.

I have to go to a meeting.

[upbeat music]

Hi!

Sorry, I didn't wanna

[upbeat music]

were gonna wrap it in before I got here.

No, we were waiting for you to cut up the perillas.

[laughs]

I'm joining.

Oh my God, join us!

It's a party.

So the big lettuce leaf and then this guy.

That's

raw garlic for the

[upbeat music]

Bon appétit.

Sorry, Carla.

We're out of time.