Recipe Pyramid: Bibimbap
Balancing flavor is the key to good eating, and at the heart of good cooking. Bibimbap, a Korean rice dish with mixed sauteed and seasoned vegetables, is a great way to practice this skill. Bibim (to mix) Bap (rice) can be made with a variety of ingredients but unlike other grain bowls, it’s important to mix the components together very well. It’s a dish that asks you to pay attention, to taste how synchronicity happens when the right ingredients come together.
One version of its origin story suggests this Korean dish was a way to create a new meal by combining leftover prepared vegetables over a bed of rice. As a concept, it’s easy to lose sight of the reason behind the choice of ingredients (especially when you go down the substitution rabbit hole), and result in a chaotic sampler bowl. So instead of a recipe with specific ingredients, I created a recipe pyramid to illustrate how I built my latest bibimbap bowl.
A recipe pyramid that categorizes bibimbap ingredients into base, middle, and top notes along with words that illustrate their purpose.
There is a lot of room for experimentation and other considerations that are not listed (i.e. cook time, cooking techniques, visual aesthetic), but I’m curious if this is helpful as a way to start analyzing how a recipe or dish works, and confidentally adapt and make substitutions without scrolling to the bottom, and hoping their subsitution is in the fridge. I’m not 100% sure where to take it from here, but looking forward to any thoughts, and hopefully make more of these!
Basic: you’ll need a minimum of 3 ingredients, one from each note.
rice + fried egg + soy sauce. Add a knob of butter and it’s magic.
Intermediate: if an egg is not your choice, choose 2 vegetables that offset eachother to pair with a base of grains.
farro + [earthy mushrooms + cold acidic sauerkraut] + whipped goat cheese
rice + [sauteed garlicky kale + sweet roasted carrots] + dollop of tahini yogurt
rice + [sweet roasted carrots + cold acidic sauerkraut] = too lean, too sweet
Guardrails more so than rules, it’s a helpful start to becoming a better cook, and avoid becoming a weekly human garbage disposal.
Seasoning the Gochujang Sauce
Use the same methodology to build the sauce. The classic bibimbap sauce uses gochujang, a concentrated Korean red pepper paste, as the base. Because the paste is plenty salty and spicy, I’m considering the other elements that either do not exist or need a boost (umami, fat, texture, acid, and sweet). I continue rounding out the base note with more umami and fat by adding sesame oil (enough to punch through the paste, but not too much so that it becomes oily). I follow this with vinegar for acid (noting both the sweetness and acidity of the vinegar being used), then sweetness (I reach for maple syrup because it has a more neutral flavor and is less sweet than honey, and is a syrup instead of sugar granules that I would have to dissolve) at the very end. After an initial taste, I go back and forth to make adjustments.
How to create balance
When the sauce is too umami forward (which is different from being too salty), consider adding more acid to combat the earthiness.
Strong spicy flavors benefit greatly from the balancing role of sweet.
When the sauce tastes equally salty and sour, add a little sweet to pull these two flavors together.
When a sauce’s flavors finally feel in harmony, remember to consider texture as another element of the eating experience - is it too thick? Is it pourable? Add water.