Ever since Andrew first made me Poke, the combination of garlic, ginger, sesame, and chile has been one of my favorite flavor combinations. Just the thought of it makes my mouth water. It’s a flavor combination that is also found in bulgogi. The gate-way for many non-Koreans to Korean food, bulgogi is a sweet, spicy, and flavorful sauteed beef dish.

Yesterday was a perfect spring day in Juneau and our friend offered to host folks to grill-out. His house is on the top of one of the highest hills in town and gets sun longer than just about anyone else’s. His house has no yard and exits straight onto the street. Not a problem. We just set up in the street! I had a couple packs of venison thawed in the fridge, one of which was labeled “Stew meat” and at the host’s suggestion, I turned them into kebabs.

This recipe is all about the bulgogi-style marinade. It went great with the venison and would be equally good with beef, salmon, or chicken. I only got a picture of the kebabs before they were put on the grill because when they came off, they were gone within four minutes.

The salt in the soy-sauce is what is doing the heavy lifting in this recipe. I specifically was using a lesser cut from my deer. This is a great way to use those cuts as well as a great way to use a cheaper cut of meat from your butcher when you’re not in the mood to splurge on a fancy steak. The marinade breaks down the meat so that what would normally be a tougher piece comes out delicious and buttery.

Bulgogi-Style Venison Kebabs

For the Bulgogi-Style Marinade

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons Mirren

1 teaspoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon chili paste

2 tablespoons white sugar

4 green onions finely chopped

1 piece ginger, one inch by two inches, finely grated

4 garlic cloves, finely diced

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

Fresh-ground black pepper to taste

For the Kebabs

1.5 pounds thawed venison – cut into one and a half inch cubes

5 strips bacon – cut into one inch pieces

Half a yellow onion – cut into one inch chunks

One red bell pepper – cut into one inch chunks

2 cups whole mushrooms – all around one to one & a half inch wide

Kebab skewers soaked in water

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a large bowl, whisk together. Add the venison (or meat of choice) and massage into the marinade. Lift out meat into a ziplock bag, pour about half of the remaining marinade into the bag, and squeeze/suck out any extra air. Add the bacon, onion, pepper, and mushrooms to the marinade and toss well until marinade is evenly distributed. Place bowl and zip-lock in the fridge and marinate for at least 90 minutes.

Soak your kebab skewers (if using bamboo skewers) half an hour before you build your kebabs. Soaking the wood means that your skewers wont burn and fall apart on the grill. When building your kebabs, try not to squeeze all the ingredients down on each other, it’s better for them to have a little space. Place a piece of bacon next to each piece of venison. Other than that, thread the kebabs in any order.

Cook over the cool side of your grill until done, we cooked ours for about twenty minutes.

Made 14 kebab with 20 minutes prep time (+90 minutes marinating time).

A Note on Ingredients and Substitutions

We pick up a jar of Korean Gochuang red pepper paste anytime we’re out of town and can hit up a Korean market. At this point however, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could start finding this in just about any store that features a decent “international” aisle. This paste is medium spicy, smoky, a little sweet, and has an over-all great deep flavor. I’m a big fan. However, if you don’t have access to this particular paste, you can substitute a tablespoon of red pepper chili flakes.

For the fish sauce, we’re lucky to be able to pick up Red Boat Fish Sauce from our local gourmet shop Panhandle Provisions. This stuff is the most beautiful fish sauce ever. If you don’t have fish sauce, you can still make this dish, but I feel like fish sauce, and especially fish sauce on the level of Red Boat gives an almost umami level of deepness to dishes.

You can substitute dry sherry for the mirin. If you don’t have sherry, you can use white wine, but I’d start with one tablespoon white wine and taste the marinade and then decided if I wanted to add more.

For the venison, be careful to take extra time to make sure all silverskin is removed. Since you’re probably using a lesser cut of meat for this (like I did) there will probably be a little work to do to prep the meat. I was a little nervous because some of the meat I was using had some tough connective tissue deep inside the meat itself which I couldn’t cut out without cutting the pieces into tiny bits. I left it in. The marinade did its job and the kebabs came out without any toughness.

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