Bulgolgi or bust

Casey served his mission in Korea and since he's been back (6 years) he hasn't ever successfully cooked Korean food. He's been wanting to for a long time but it's hard to find authentic ingredients and then know how to cook it right. Yesterday Casey got up the courage to finally try it out - mostly because I gave him a bottle of kimchi for Easter that we didn't want sitting around for too long! We headed over to our local Asian market which was pretty nice and big due to the large Mong population here. We found all the ingredients to make kimchi chigae, bulgolgi, and japjae. I helped cook and Casey told me how things were supposed to look.

Everything turned out pretty good. The kimchi chigae (kimchi soup) was extremely spicy (I may have added a little too much chili paste...). It was the hottest thing I've ever eaten in my life. It was so hot my inner ears burned while it was going down, and smelling it burned my eyes. The bulgolgi (Korean BBQ beef) and the japjae (Korean noodles) were the highlights of the ensemble. As for the beverage: Casey had us all try some Aloe which is a popular Korean beverage actually made out of Aloe Vera (there were even chunks of aloe in it). Overall is was a ton of fun to make everything and see Casey's excitement in eating it all. We'll definitely make Korean food more often now.

Thanks to Derrick and Karen for wanting to try everything!