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Recipe

Beef Bulgogi: Sweet, Salty, and Gone Fast

20 min prep 10 min cook Serves 4 October 27, 2026
A hot plate of beef bulgogi with sliced beef, sesame seeds, and green onions, with small bowls of side dishes around it

People fight over the last piece of bulgogi. I've watched it happen. A pan of this beef hits the table, and suddenly everybody who swore they were full five minutes ago has room again. Funny how that works.

Bulgogi is Korean grilled meat, and the name tells you the job: bul means fire, gogi means meat. You slice the beef thin, you soak it in a marinade built on soy sauce, pear, garlic, and sesame oil, and then you cook it hot and fast so the edges char a little and the sugar in the marinade goes dark and sticky. The pear isn't a cute extra. It sweetens the marinade and it helps make the beef tender, so don't skip it and then wonder why yours tastes flat.

You can grill this outside if you want, and it's great that way. A ripping hot cast iron pan inside does the job just fine, and that's how I make it most of the time. The one rule that matters is batches. Cook too much beef at once and it steams in a puddle. Cook a single layer at a time and you get browned edges, a little char, and beef worth fighting over.

Star ingredients Beef

Ingredients

For the marinade

  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 1 tbsp mirin
  • 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1/2 Asian pear, peeled and grated, about 1/2 cup
  • 1 tbsp neutral oil

For the beef and serving

  • 1 1/2 lb ribeye or sirloin, sliced very thin against the grain
  • 1/2 yellow onion, sliced thin
  • 1 small carrot, cut into thin matchsticks
  • 3 green onions, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1 tbsp neutral oil, for the pan
  • 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
  • 2 green onions, sliced thin, for serving
  • Cooked short grain rice, for serving
  • Lettuce leaves, for serving
  • Kimchi, for serving

Instructions

1

Put the beef in the freezer for 30 minutes, until it firms up but isn't frozen solid. Slice it very thin against the grain with a sharp knife, about 1/8 inch thick. Thin slices cook fast and pick up more marinade. If your butcher will slice it for you, take the help and save yourself the knife work.

2

Stir the marinade in a large bowl: the soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, sesame oil, mirin, garlic, ginger, black pepper, grated pear, and neutral oil. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Taste a drop off a spoon. It should taste sweet first, then salty, with garlic right behind it.

3

Add the beef, onion, carrot, and green onion pieces to the bowl. Toss with your hands until every slice gets coated and the slices aren't stuck together in clumps. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour and up to overnight. Don't push it past a day, because the pear keeps working and the beef can go mushy.

4

Pull the beef out of the fridge 20 minutes before you cook. Use tongs to lift the beef out of the marinade and let the extra drip back into the bowl. Beef that goes into the pan dripping wet won't brown, so shake off what you can.

5

Heat a large cast iron skillet or grill pan over high heat until it smokes lightly. Add the neutral oil and swirl it around the pan.

6

Add beef in a single layer, using about a third of the batch at a time, and leave it alone for 1 minute so the bottom browns. Flip and toss for 1 to 2 more minutes, until the beef is cooked through and the edges have picked up some char. Move that batch to a plate.

7

Repeat step 6 with the rest of the beef, adding the onion and carrot from the marinade to the last batch so they cook in the pan juices. If the pan gets dry between batches, add a small splash of oil.

8

Put all the beef back in the pan and toss it for about 30 seconds so everything is hot and glossy. Scatter the sesame seeds and sliced green onions over the top. Serve right away over rice, or spoon it into lettuce leaves, with kimchi on the side.

Moe Train's tip:

Cook in a single layer and don't crowd the pan, even if you're hungry and impatient. Crowded beef steams in its own marinade and turns gray, and gray bulgogi is a sad plate. Three quick batches in a hot pan take maybe ten minutes total, and the charred edges you get are the whole point of the dish.

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