While everyone was all about the green today (St. Patrick’s Day!), today’s lunch was all about color!
Trying to eat healthier and exercise regularly has required me to stock up on a variety of produce to choose from during the week or else I won’t eat anything but rice and meat. Old habits die hard — eating rice and some kind of meat was my diet for at least the first half of my life. My lunches for work still have that carb + meat combo but I’m trying to mix up my grains and trying to use exclusively brown rice. I was doing good until today when I caved and bought a bag of short grain rice for this bibimbap. Whenever a runny egg is involved, brown rice just doesn’t do it for me. 
I love bibimbap but it’s just so time consuming sauteeing every vegetable just to put in a bowl with rice and egg and stir it all together. But then it’s so delicious, and such a good way of using up old produce.
For bentos, I bought two stalks of broccoli and hate throwing out the actual stalk so I turned to the internet to see what people do with it. Apparently peeling the tough exterior will lead you to its tender insides!
To cut down on oil use, I ended up water sauteeing the carrots, broccoli stalk, shitake mushrooms, enoki, and I blanched the spinach. I drizzled a touch of sesame oil on everything at the end, at least a teaspoon or two overall (for those watching what you eat :). With my little cucumbers, I tossed it with some thinly sliced onion and coated with salt so it could wilt for my vegetable bowl!
I wanted some meat for this dish so I ended up using the other half of my ground turkey! I love portioning out stuff for the freezer so I defrosted my blocked turkey and marinated with sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic for a quick “bulgogi” taste. I don’t remember the last bulgogi marinade recipe I used so I tried a new recipe and it was only okay so I won’t bother sharing it.
But piled on white rice with an egg yolk in the middle? Didn’t matter that the marinade was only okay because the bowl was amaaaaaaaazing! I didn’t think that amount of vegetables would make three servings but I ended up eating this bowl, making myself ANOTHER one (no egg), then packed up the last of it for lunch this week.
And I am too full. I should have stopped at one…
I don’t really have a recipe for this. I usually take the produce in my fridge, cut them into matchsticks/bite sized pieces, saute them until tender-crisp, and drizzle with sesame oil and salt. This particular bowl of bibimbap had the following:
- Carrots – cut into matchsticks and water sauteed; drizzle with a little sesame oil, salt, and sesame seeds
- Broccoli stalk – peel tough outer skin and cut into matchsticks; saute in a little sesame oil with ginger and onions
- Enoki mushrooms – water saute
- Shitake mushrooms – rehydrate and slice; saute with some of the water you used to re-hydrate and drizzle a little sesame oil until the water evaporates
- Spinach – boil water and throw in the baby spinach; after its wilted, drain and run cold water through it to stop cooking; drizzle with a little sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds
- Cucumber and onion – thinly slice the cucumbers and onion; sprinkle with salt and let sit for while you prepare other ingredients; rinse with cold water if too salty
- Turkey bulgogi – using your favorite bulgogi marinade, marinate the ground turkey and saute until cooked!
- Thinly sliced garlic and jalapeno fried in sesame oil
- Shredded red-leaf lettuce
The gochujang sauce I used in this instance was from cHow Divine and it was pretty darn good, easy too! Put all those ingredients on top of rice (half a cup for me!) with an egg of some kind (poached, fried, raw…) along with the sauce and mix, mix, mix!
