grilled gochujang beef and mushroom bowls
our first grill out of 2025!
It’s nostalgia week here on What to Cook! Like I mentioned on Wednesday, my family and I are currently spending spring break on Coronado Island, where George and I lived as newlyweds while he was stationed here for the Navy. And today’s recipe was inspired by one I developed for my first cookbook, Just Married, which was published in 2018 and includes so many delicious meals I used to cook for George back when we were… well — just married!
I’ve re-worked it to suit What To Cook standards, but today’s recipe is based off of the “Korean Sliced Beef,” which didn’t have a photo in the book*, so even I forget about it, which is a shame because it is so, so good. I vividly remember testing it during a dinner party at a friend’s house in Palo Alto, while George was in business school at Stanford and I was developing the recipes for Just Married. When I sent all our friends my feedback form the morning after the dinner party (yes, I seriously had a Google Doc feedback form that I would send friends after testing recipes on them!) the consensus was: “no notes, 10/10.” So it’s time we give this one the spotlight it deserves.
*FYI, this is why I ensured that every single recipe in What to Cook the book have a photo! A good photograph makes the recipe so much more memorable and tempting to cook.
When less expensive cuts of meat are marinated and dressed up right, they can be just as special as the most expensive T-bone your butcher has to offer. Here, inexpensive flat iron steak takes a bath in a gochujang marinade (for at least 2 hours, or, ideally, for 12 to 24 hours) before being grilled to perfection. In Just Married, the recipe ran as an entree only, but today we’re going to make it a full meal by adding portobello mushrooms to the mix, as well as some fancied-up white rice, and kimchi for a refreshing crunch.
If you’re not a mushroom person, you could swap in bok choy, baby bok choy, asparagus, or red bell pepper. Or skip it — kimchi totally counts as veg.
This is our first recipe calling for the grill in 2025! Which means it’s time to clean your grill and fill the propane tank. You might think, “I haven’t touched my grill in months, what’s there to clean?!” The answer is: all the old oil from last spring/summer/fall that seeped down into your grill. If you don’t remember the last time you really cleaned your grill, I highly recommend Googling (or asking ChatGPT) how to deep clean your specific grill model, then giving it a good scrub. If you need some extra motivation, click here to read about the time a grill I tried to cook with went up in flames, along with hundreds of dollars of salmon. Actually, that was the same house where I tested this recipe! Good times. For anyone who was in George’s class, I am, of course, referring to the British guys’ house in Woodside.
PS, if you don’t own a grill you can still cook this recipe! Check the notes beneath the recipe for a how-to.
IMO these are the only tools you need for grilling:
Silicone tongs: I freaking hate those gigantic, unwieldy, stainless steel grill tongs. They are so unnecessary. I just use long silicone tongs, which can fit in a normal drawer easily and can also be used indoors in your nonstick skillets.
Grill brush: Wire bristle brushes work the best, but there are too many horror stories about them leaving wires in food. I use one of these now.
Meat thermometer: I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: You do not have x-ray vision! You cannot cook perfectly cooked meat without a meat thermometer.
today’s gochujang sauce! cook it with this meal, then again with shrimp, chicken, tofu, or pork — it’s good with any protein. or drizzled over grilled veggies!
When I have the foresight to make a marinade the night before (or even just earlier in the day), grilled steak is one of the meals I cook most often when I don’t feel like cooking. It’s so low lift — you just pour the marinade ingredients in a bag and let the steak hang out in the fridge for a day. Heat the grill, grill it, and voila, you have a restaurant-worthy meal. After you cook today’s recipe, add sesame-ginger steak (and my favorite creamy, crunchy cucumber and pepper salad) to your grilled-steak repertoire. If you feel like cooking steak but don’t feel like grilling, try sheet-pan orange teriyaki steak and broccoli. And finally, now that your grill’s clean for the season, you have to put grilled pickle-brined sandwiches on your meal plan for the week ahead!
Serves 4
