Flanken ribs for Galbi; note the bones cut crosswise at right. (We borrowed this photo from our local supermarket’s website, which advertises flanken ribs but doesn’t actually sell them.)
Galbi vs Bulgogi? Most Koreans would tell you a taste comparison isn’t even worth doing. In a typical comment in a recent restaurant review, my Yelp friend Josh B wrote “select galbi over bulgogi if you agree that kimchi is preferable to lettuce”. That’s because Galbi is a luxury food, reserved for special occasions, while Bulgogi is a run of the mill meat for KBBQ*. If you find both on the menu in a Korean restaurant, Galbi is likely to be considerably more expensive.
But the differences between the two cuts of beef used are actually not that great, apart from those rib bones. Galbi meat comes from the short rib and is presented with the bone on (more on this in a minute). Bulgogi is a lean, tender cut of steak which might come from the rib eye just above the short rib, or maybe a fillet, sirloin or flank steak.
So maybe the big difference is in the marinade? Each will spend one hour (or maybe much longer, if you buy pre-marinated meat) in a soy-based marinade with sweetener and grated pear for tenderizing and typical Korean seasonings. Can we just use the same marinade for both? I asked this question on the Korean cooking group on Facebook and was told oh no, the Galbi marinade is sweeter or uses more fruit.
After comparing recipes from multiple sites and books of Korean recipes, we concluded that while the proportions of ingredients may be different, the flavor profiles are not far apart at all.
Here, for example, are the recipes from the very popular maangchi.com site (we’ve normalized the order of ingredients and quantities so you can truly compare apples to apples, or pears to pears in this instance):
| Maangchi’s Bulgogi Marinade |
Maangchi’s Galbi Marinade |
6 T soy sauce
6 T brown sugar
3/8 t ground black pepper
1 ½ cup crushed Korean pear
3/4 cup onion purée
12 cloves of minced garlic
3 green onions, chopped
3 t minced ginger
3 T toasted sesame oil
several thin slices of carrot |
1/3 c soy sauce
1/3 c water or cooking wine
¼ c honey or 1/3 c brown sugar
1 t ground black pepper
2 c crushed Korean pear
8 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
1 t chopped ginger
2 T toasted sesame oil |
You might also compare the H Mart recipes for Bulgogi and Galbi and you’ll find the same similarities, though the Galbi is more complex (because it’s “special”). So we say there’s nothing wrong with making one marinade, erring on the side of more ingredients rather than less, which gives us a purer test of the meats themselves.
Now, about those rib bones in the Galbi. We went to considerable lengths to find flanken ribs, in which the whole rib roast is sawn across the ribs to produce long strips of meat punctuated by a section of bone every couple of inches. This is the only way we had ever experienced Galbi in numerous California restaurants. It turns out that ribs prepared this way are called “LA Galbi” after Los Angeles Koreatown, and it’s not the way the ribs are cut in Korea. There, the meat is cut along the bone on one side of the rib, then the meat is butterflied so you end up with the bone attached to a long strip of meat. Maanchi demonstrates this beautifully in a video presenting an alternate recipe for Galbi. (The short rib pieces she starts with are maybe half the length of the short ribs you find in American butcher counters, so you’d need to ask a favor of your butcher or simply deal with super-sized Galbi.)
Ready for the results of our taste test? You can read about it here.
*One of our favorite Korean cookbooks is the out-of-print Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen, by Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall. In her Bulgogi recipe the author comments that Koreans have a sentimental attachment to a grass-fed beef called hanu kogi which is flavorful but a bit tough. This may contribute to the perception of Galbi as a superior dish.
