I discovered a recipe from Emeril which brought back fond memories of thin sliced beef from KTA in a soy sauce marinade. (The butchers eventually stopped offering the thin slicing service; it’s a time-consuming process to keep the meat and knife sufficiently cold. Continue reading for more commentary on this subject.) I’m not sure I would call the recipe “Korean.” It sounds more like an American bastard child of grilled thin sliced beef teriyaki over sticky white rice and ground pork lettuce wraps with crunchy rice noodles.

Anyway, the only part of the dish I made word-for-word was the chile sauce. For the marinade, I just threw the ingredients together with a “Oh that looks about right.”

A few helpful hints for next time:

1. If you're slicing a quantity of pork over 1 lb, you may need to stick the meat back in the freezer for 15 minutes. Meat too warm for thin slicing will begin to tear; eventually, you'll be forced to make larger slices or shred your pork. Also, I'm not sure if it helps in any statistically significant way, but I stuck the knife in the freezer along with the meat tray. (See there's this thing called thermodynamics... Nevermind.)
2. For the marinade, two tips: first, just crush the garlic. Second, peel off the skin of your ginger with your paring knife, toss the skin, and use the same knife to peel curls of fresh ginger directly into your marinade. Make sure your knife is working with the fiber of the ginger, not against it, or you'll be doing more stabbing than peeling.
3. Toast your white sesame seeds to a nice golden brown with a very lightly oiled pan and the burner on high. (Heat Setting: 7-8) But don't walk too far in the other direction or your seeds will be black instead of brown.
4. One cup of jasmine rice took exactly 10 minutes to cook once the blue sauce pan was covered.

The meal was delicious. The pork was melt-in-your-mouth tender. The rice was appropriately sticky—just like Mom used to make it. The choice of lettuce was perfect. Overall, this dish is a definite keeper.