I’ve been flat out with my studies, so haven’t really had much time for cooking or blogging, poor me 
So, in the meantime, I’ve got a recipe from my mom to tide you through till I return! This is divine, and traditionally eaten with lettuce – you get a lettuce leaf, put a spoonful of cooked rice in the middle, then a piece of the pork, then wrap it up and eat it! The lettuce is handy for a few reasons – it adds a vegetable element to this dish, as well as helping to balance out the chilli in this dish as it is veeeery spicy (well, not to me as I’ve been eating chilli dishes since I was 3, but to anyone not quite as desensitised as me it’ll burn just a little!).
The red is not from any filter or mucking around with the photo – the pork really is this red!
Ingredients
1kg pork belly, sliced reasonably thin (usually about 5mm)
5 tbsp caster sugar
5 tbsp korean chilli paste (gotchujjang)
1 tbsp garlic
1/2 onion, grated
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
To Serve
Cooked rice
Lettuce (we usually use red or green oak lettuce, but it’s fine with iceberg or red coral)
1. Mix together all ingredients and marinate the pork for a few hours, or overnight if you can.
2. Heat a non-stick frying pan or grill, place the pork on and cook till the meat is well done.
3. Serve with rice and lettuce leaves to make wraps 
So there you go – quick and easy! It might be a bit of a struggle to find the korean chilli paste, but you should be able to find it at most Chinese or Korean grocery stores
This is the arrangement of a lettuce wrap known as ‘ssam’ in Korean – an open lettuce leaf, a smal spoonful of rice, some ‘namul banchan’ (root/stringy vegetable side dishes), a spoonful of gochujjang (Korean chilli paste) and the pork!
Once everything has been placed in the lettuce leaf, it is then carefully wrapped like so and eaten up in one or two bites – delicious, and a guaranteed way of getting the kids to devour half a head of lettuce on their own!
[tags]pork, chilli, korean food, korean cooking[/tags]
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ellie! I’m planning to make a big batch of this for myself and was wondering if you knew how long i could keep the uncooked marintaed pork in the fridge for? Any tips?
Thanks!!
@d – I wouldn’t leave the uncooked pork in the fridge for any longer than 2 days…if it’s going to be longer than that between making and eating, I’d recommend freezing it and defrosting it overnight in the fridge the day before you want to cook it!
both your bulgogi recipes look great. a couple questions: do you recommend a particular brand of korean chile paste (I have looked at both Amazon and KOA Mart)? Also, how long per side does it take to cook? Approximately — I realize all pans/stoves/meats are different, but I am just trying to figure out how long the whole meal will take. And as a vegan cooking for omnivores, I need extra guidance to tell when meats are done…thanks for all the delicious food — my dad used to spend a lot of time in Seoul, so I am looking forward to recreating some garlicky dishes!
Michele – So long as it’s billed as gochujjang (proper Korean chili paste) then it should be fine
There are as many different brands of this as there are mustard in the US (okay, maybe not QUITE that many) and each have slight flavour differences, but they are essentially the same 
In regards to cooking the dish, you can tell that it’s cooked when it feels firm and the meat is holding a firm shape rather than being soft and floppy. Cooking time does depend on pan and stovetop, but over a medium flame then it should be definitely cooked in about 20 minutes (on my stovetop I generally take 10-15 minutes, but I’m erring on the side of caution here!)