manilaplay The Secret to Great Korean BBQ Is Not What You Think

ImageCredit...Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas.

In my house growing up, Korean-barbecue clothes were a set of raggedy T-shirts and sweatpants reserved for nights when we were grilling at home — and by grilling at home, I mean indoors.

My family would grill meat right at our round, lacquered dining table. In the center sat a portable butane stove, topped with a three-foot domed wheel of steel, a heavy black pan made by a metalworker friend of my mother’s. A spaceship-looking thing, it sat perfectly over the butane stove, sizzling with galbi, soy-marinated short ribs; samgyeopsal, gloriously fatty pork belly; and chadolbaegi, razor-thin slices of brisket that curled up as soon as they hit the heat. These fiery meals were precise but casual, remarkable but easy to throw together.

Recipe: Korean BBQ Steak

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You can’t imagine the mess they made. After one of these dinners, our basketball jerseys and band T-shirts would go straight into the wash. As for the flying-saucer pan, we got many meals out of it until I stole it, driving it up to New York and never bringing it back. (It’s too heavy to move twice.)

If you don’t have a metalworker friend who can fashion you a special Korean-barbecue panmanilaplay, then a regular outdoor grill and full steaks, marinated in advance and sliced after grilling, work just fine. It’s a technique I learned from Peter Cho, the chef and owner of Jeju in Portland, Ore.

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