Beans & Rice Saga: Korean-ish

Here's attempt number two at beans and rice. I figured, the most appealing thing of my favorite meal (bulgogi/bibimbap) is the sauce... I could basically put that on anything and make it delicious. So it needed to go into our beans and rice.

For the first attempt, I cooked a pound of white beans so we had quite a few beans in the freezer, so this was also the first attempt at using the beans after they were frozen.

The beans: frozen white northern beans
The rice: white medium grain enriched rice
The add-ins: mushrooms sauteed in garlic, green onions
The seasonings: bulgogi sauce; topped with sesame seeds
The process: I thawed the beans for a few hours on the counter. While the rice was cooking, I made the sauce* and sauteed mushrooms in butter and garlic, then added green onions. I nuked the beans for about a minute before stirring them into the rice, then adding the mushroom/onion mix, then the sauce, mixed thoroughly, and let it cook for a couple minutes while I got bowls and forks and cleaned up a bit.

*I made semi-half of the sauce recipe. Here's what I mean... Normally, when I'm making bulgogi/bibimbap, I make the sauce like this: 1/3 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 Tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, 1/4 tsp ground ginger. For this, I used about half the soy sauce and half the brown sugar, half the sesame oil, and the same amount of red pepper flakes and ginger.

The verdict: We both give it about a 6/10. We're going to try it at some point with the full sauce recipe, because it could use a little more oomph. (Although the red pepper flake shines through pretty well.) But it's pretty good.