Bulgogi recipe: how to make Korean marinated beef

Bulgogi (불고기) is thinly sliced beef that sits in a sweet marinade of soy sauce, sugar, garlic and sesame oil and is then briefly grilled or pan-fried over high heat. The name combines 불 (bul, fire) and 고기 (gogi, meat). This recipe follows Korean Bapsang and is for 900 g of meat.

Which beef do I use for bulgogi?

Tender cuts such as rib eye or top sirloin work best; tenderloin is also possible. In Korea, you can also buy the beef already sliced for the purpose, as 불고기감 (Bulgogi-gam).

At home, you slice it yourself: put the beef in the freezer for about an hour until it is partly frozen. Then it can be cut across the grain into slices about 3 mm thick.

What ingredients do I need for bulgogi?

• 900 g rib eye or top sirloin, thinly sliced
• 3 scallions
• 1 small onion
• 1 carrot (optional)

For the marinade

• 6 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 tbsp sugar, or 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp honey
• 3 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp cooking rice wine
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp sesame seeds
• ½ Asian pear, grated, or a sweet apple instead
• ⅛ tsp pepper

Soy sauce, sesame oil and sesame seeds are also included in our Dosirak cooking box with 25 Korean recipes.

Does the pear make the beef tender?

Many recipes justify the pear by saying it tenderizes the meat. It adds flavor, but as a tenderizer it is weak. In a Korean study from 2000, pear tenderized beef the least of five fruits tested; pineapple, papaya, fig and kiwi were considerably more effective. In a Japanese study from 2025, pear was not among the fruits with increased activity at refrigerator temperature, unlike fig, pineapple and kiwi.

If you use kiwi, be careful: it is so strong that, according to the recipe blog Kimchimari, half a kiwi is enough for more than 2 kg of beef.

How do I make bulgogi?

1. Stir together all the marinade ingredients.
2. Cut the onion, scallions and carrot into strips.
3. Mix the beef with the marinade and vegetables and let it sit for 30 to 60 minutes. Overnight in the fridge works too.
4. Fry the beef in a pan over medium-high heat until slightly caramelized. Do not add too much at once: if the pan is too full, according to Kimchimari, too much juice comes out and the meat boils instead of browning.

Instead of a pan, you can also cook bulgogi on a charcoal or gas grill, which is the traditional way. If you let it simmer in its own juices instead, the meat turns softer and you get a sauce.

What do you eat with bulgogi?

Bulgogi is often eaten with rice, kimchi and small side dishes. Traditionally, it is wrapped in lettuce leaves with 쌈장 (Ssamjang), a savory dipping paste. Seonkyoung Longest also uses bulgogi as a topping for bibimbap. How to make the kimchi to go with it yourself is explained in How to make kimchi.

What kinds of bulgogi are there?

• Dwaeji bulgogi (돼지불고기), also jeyuk bokkeum: pork, usually shoulder or neck, in a spicy marinade with gochujang.
• Seoul style: the beef cooks on a domed plate, and a sweet broth is poured around the edge.
• Gwangyang style: the beef is not marinated beforehand. The sauce is poured over just before grilling, over charcoal at the table.
• Eonyang style from Ulsan: the beef is chopped, pounded and shaped into patties that are grilled on a rack without broth.
• Ttukbaegi bulgogi: bulgogi with broth in an earthenware pot, usually with glass noodles and mushrooms.

There is even a bulgogi burger: the Korean fast food chain Lotteria has sold one since 1992 and, according to the newspaper Dailian, has sold more than a billion of them.

Where does bulgogi come from?

The word bulgogi is fairly recent. According to the linguist Lee Ki-moon, it comes from the dialect of Pyeongan Province in what is now North Korea and only reached Seoul with refugees after 1945. It is recorded in a newspaper by 1931 at the latest, and according to Lee, a dictionary only included it in 1950.

The dish itself has older predecessors. At the royal court and in Seoul's aristocratic households, thinly sliced, marinated and grilled beef was called 너비아니 (Neobiani), roughly "cut wide." An even older ancestor is often said to be 맥적 (Maekjeok), meat grilled on a skewer from the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo. This origin is disputed among researchers, however.

Today's form changed several times in the 20th century: according to a study by Lee Kyou-Jin and Cho Mi-Sook, bulgogi in broth was especially popular from the 1960s to the 1990s, after which grilled versions came back.

Sources

• Korean Bapsang: bulgogi recipe and Jeyuk-bokkeum
• Kimchimari: bulgogi recipe
• Seonkyoung Longest: bulgogi recipe
• 10000recipe: recipe 6889393 (in Korean)
• Bae Young-Hee, Roh Jung-Hae: Application of Proteolytic Enzymes in Fruits for Meat Tenderization, Korean Journal of Food and Cookery Science 16(4), 2000, koreascience.kr
• Noda et al.: A Comprehensive Comparative Study on Tenderization of Beef using Plant Proteases in Food, Journal of Cookery Science of Japan 58(2), 2025, J-STAGE
• Lee Ki-moon: „불고기“ 이야기, Saegugeosaenghwal 16(4), National Institute of Korean Language, 2006, PDF (in Korean)
• Lee Kyou-Jin, Cho Mi-Sook: The evolution of bulgogi over the past 100 years, Korea Journal 53(4), 2013, Ewha Womans University
• Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: 불고기 (in Korean)
• Kyunghyang Shinmun: on the origin of the word (2018, in Korean)
• Korea Herald: Discover bulgogi prepared three different ways (2022)
• Dailian: 30 years of the Lotteria bulgogi burger (2022, in Korean)
• Wikipedia: Bulgogi, 불고기