In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

Over the last few years, Korean barbecue has gained fresh relevance in the United States. Whether served on hot dog buns in Manhattan, tortillas in Los Angeles or rice in Korean restaurants around the country, the sweet, oniony flavors of bulgoki, japchae and galbi are incredibly delicious and increasingly popular.

When I was a kid, bulgoki (also spelled bulgogi, pulgoki, pulgogi and any number of other ways) was a staple in my house. My parents, who lived in Korea before I was born, loved the stuff and would cook it on an electric griddle at our dinner table. As my sisters and I got older, we got involved in the fun; some of my first cooking experiences involved flipping bulgoki with a pair of bamboo tongs.

I've played with amounts and ingredients, but my mother's basic bulgoki recipe is fantastic. In fact, my only major change is in the dipping sauce: while my parents used light soy sauce with a sprinkle of pepper, I prefer a more traditional garlic/vinegar sauce, which I've included below.

Get the recipe for bulgoki after the jump.

I'm a huge fan of Korean food. It's spicy and so full of fresh, vibrant ingredients that I always feel superhealthy after eating it. So when I heard that a gigantic bowl of bibimbap would be served on the stretch of New York City's West 32 Street better known as Korea Way last Sunday I dropped everything and hopped on the subway. For those unfamiliar with Korean cuisine, bibimbap is a dish consisting of rice mixed with a wide array of ingredients. There's usually plenty of veggies, a bit of meat and there's always gojujang, a fiery chili pepper paste. The version that was served up to a hungry horde that day is known as Jeonju bibimbap. Before mixing the ingredients were laid out in a stunning visual display that used five colors (green, white, red, black and yellow) and resembled the Korean flag. The 507-pound bowl of bibimbap contained 19 ingredients and took 27 people 43 hours to prepare.

As far as I'm concerned, my home borough of Queens is the food capital of New York City, Manhattan be damned. Well, that's not entirely true, but with the exception of Japanese, Queens is the best place in the city to find authentic Asian cuisine ranging from Nepalese and South Indian to Northern Chinese and Korean. Lately I've been asking my Korean dry cleaner for restaurant recommendations. When I dropped off some pants Saturday afternoon and told him that I had a bit too much to drink the prior night, he said I should head over to a spot in Flushing called Budnamujip for a steaming hot bowl of sahm-gyae tahng. He assured me that the ginseng-infused chicken soup would help sweat out my hangover and make me "strong." No doubt this was a backhanded reference to ginseng's reputed effect on male virility.

When I arrived at Budnamujip it was filled with noisy revelers who were well into their cups and would probably be finding themselves in need of some sahm-gyae tahng the next day. When the waitress brought over the bowl it was still boiling. It soon became clear this was no mere chicken and ginseng soup. For one thing, it contained an entire young chicken. The cavity was filled with rice and all sorts of other goodies. The first sip of the blazing hot broth was a tad bland, though this was readily fixed with a few shakes of pepper and a bit of coarse sea salt. As I dug in all sorts of treasures emerged: whole jujubes, or dae chu; bits of chestnut; several cloves of garlic; and a piece of ginseng. By the time I finished picking the chicken clean skin and all and slurping up every last bit of broth, I felt like a new man. So new that I had paranormal abilities and clearly envisioned an article on sahm-gyae tahng's restorative powers by Elaine "One Pot" Louie.

When I asked a gent at the next table whether sahm-gyae tahng, was good for curing hangovers he nodded and laughed. Then he held out his arm with his fist raised in the air and said "makes you strong." If you'd like to try making your own sahm-gyae tahng, here's a great recipe.

It's an endless summer in LA:

• He's a "kid" in LA, but Matt Molina is running the kitchen at the hottest restaurant in town, Mozza.
• For Labor Day, break out the keg
• The best way to chill out if you're Korean (or not) is with an ice cold bowl of naeng-myun
• Take advantage of the height of fig season with a Fresh Fig Tart
• Speaking of tarts, SOS gets its hands on the Walnut Praline Tart with Espresso Ice Cream from Hatfield's

When I saw a post on ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal about chitlins my first instinct was to exclaim, "Korean soul food? Say what!" Then I thought about it a little more, and I realized that with its hearty casseroles and stews, Korean cuisine has a lot in common with American soul food. It's just that the above dish of gobchang gui is, how to put this, a bit more soulful than other Korean fare I've encountered.

Technically, they're not chitlins, since they're beef, not pork, intestines. Either way, the dish sounds delicious. Some of you out there might be grossed out by the concept of eating a cow's small intestines. Not me, especially when I read that they taste like bacon and are stuffed with Korean pâté. Drool. To complete the organ meat orgy there was Makchang (sliced large intestine), beef heart and tripe smothered in pâté.

ZKFJ's author is lucky to be based in Korea. I've enjoyed Korean blood sausage in my native Queens, but have yet to encounter what amount to pâté-filled sausages. I gots to get me some gobchang y'all.

I hate to be known as the food blogger who cried weird, but this has got to be one of the stranger ethnic junk foods I've come across. You read that headline right folks. Just look at that packaging, a porcine Gene Kelly hoofing away in top hat and tails accompanied by his own musical score. Sarah, my fellow blogger and West Coast connection to all things Korean, tells me those yellow characters translate to dae bah, or pork bar. For some reason, I'm more comfortable referring to this frozen treat as crunch ice.

There are two types of people when it comes to Crunch Ice, those who are disappointed to learn that it's not a frozen treat composed of cracklin, lardo and boudin noir and those who are relieved. I fall into the latter category, I enjoyed Crunch Ice for what is, a vanilla ice cream pop encased in chocolate crunchies with a strawberry center. I'm pretty sure my dear friend Mr. Cutlets was disappointed to learn that Crunch Ice was not a pork-based frozen confection when I gave him a package for his 40th birthday last week. Ah well, pearls before swine; maybe swine before pearls is more apt in this instance.

If there's one food I couldn't live without, it's kimchee. It makes sense, since I'm Korean and all. And you would think that 1) being Korean and 2) it being my favorite food, I would know how to make the spicy, pickled cabbage, but I don't. I'm sure I could read a "recipe" and do it, but unlike other "packaged" foods, kimchee from the store tastes pretty damned good. You see y'all, making kimchee is a major to-do, and it's so much easier to just run out to a local Asian market and buy the stuff already made.

That is why I just about fell over when I read that Barbara of food blog Tigers & Strawberries made kimchi at home. Her post has written and photographic detail of the whole stinky, spicy process, from raw Napa cabbage to the final full bottle of kimchee that's fermented for three days.

Move over Jinro. Doosan, your main competitor in the soju game, just teamed up with one of the big boys, Anheuser-Busch.

Who knows, if all goes well A-B might just make soju a household word. As you might have guessed, the Korean spirit brewed from sweet potatoes and rice, among other things, has long been a household word for me. The crisp spirit is a lower-octane, tastier version of vodka that's the libation of choice for Korean food, barbecue or otherwise.

A-B, will be taking over the distribution of Ku Soju, which is distilled by Doosan. I've tried more than a handful of sojus in my day, but I've never heard of Ku. The article I read makes much of comparing it to such premium vodkas as Belvedere and Chopin. Forget that noise, I want to know how this stuff stands up to a blazing bowl of soon doo-boo jji-gae.

It's another late night here in the Slashfood virtual offices, and as we surf the web as we usually do in our last moments before collapsing into bed, we have come across what we think might be The Food Trend of the Year. At the beginning of this year, all the food fashion forecasters put in their guesses as to what they believe will be the "It" food for the upcoming year, whether it's exotic spices from South Asia being used more commonly in the home kitchen or specific products that will gain some traction. Maybe it will be: Korexican.

That's the fusion of Korean and Mexican, as we see in kalbi tacos from LA food blogger Eat, Drink n B Merry. Some say that "fusion" cuisine was over all the way back when leggings were in style the first time, but leggings have come back, and apparently, so has fusion. At least, it did at a semi-buzzed barbecue in southern California.

Chopped kimchee with kalbi is always delicious, but not sure how it tastes with guacamole!

For most of my friends, getting to eat bulgogi is a treat because they have to go out to a restaurant to eat the Korean marinated and grilled beef. For me, eating bulgogi is about the equivalent of eating meatloaf for my friends. It's boring because we ate it a lot when we were growing up. I know that Korean people always tell non-Koreans that they are wrong when they think that all Korean people eat is barbecue and kimchee, but for my family, it was true. We were in the midwest, and the ingredients for bulgogi and galbee were easier to find than say, fermented soybean paste.

So, since bulgogi seems to be such a treat for my friends, I have written up the "recipe" that my Mom and I use when we make it at home. I say "recipe" in quotes because everyone, of course, makes bulgogi and other Korean foods by taste. Make the marinade, take a taste, and adjust to your liking. It's the same nasic marinade we saw last year for Korean-marinated Flank Steak, but don't you dare call that bulgogi.

For this edition of Midnight Snack I decided to crack open probably some of the strangest stuff I've come across in a long time: Fried Chicken Snack and Hot Chicken Snack. Both of these junk food oddities come to the States from Korea's Nong Shim Co.

First a few words about the packaging. While I've taken this photo vertically with shaky late-night hands to better display the "chicken," the boxes open horizontally not unlike a package of takeout fried chicken. That folks is where the resemblance ends, almost. At least the pieces look like fried chicken drumsticks. Each is about an inch long and has a rough surface resembling breading.

But how do they taste? Sooooo very glad you asked. Even though it bears the words "Fried Chicken Taste" on the package this variety tastes only like fried bird because of its crunch and slightly greasy texture. I prefer the hot variety, which again tastes nothing at all like fried chicken, but rather like a wheat-based version of Andy Capp's Hot Fries. But it's all good, I was down a quart of palm oil anyway.

For those of you who think I'm all about junk food, you're right. But don't worry, future editions of Midnight Snack may feature me eating cold leftovers while standing in front of the fridge.

If you live on either coast, or even in the Midwest in a major metropolitan area, you'll have no problem finding an Asian grocery store. Korean-specific markets are a little harder to find, and if you're somewhere where there isn't a huge population of Korean people, well, you might find yourself at a loss when a craving for kimchee strikes. You can make it yourself, or you can click over to koaMart, an online Korean food grocer.

Sure, they do the dry, non-perishable goods like ramen and rice, but they can send perishable goods like tofu and kimchee as well. I've never shopped at the store since I live in Los Angeles, but if I were in say, the mountains of Colorado (or really, really lazy) I might give them a try. Shipping isn't cheap, but hey, when you need your pickled, fermented cabbage, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The idea for a bulgogi burger came to me last summer when I was thinking about entering a burger grill-off/competition. Little did I know that the "Bulgogi Burger" is already a standard menu item on fast food burger joints in Korea. I was slightly disheartened, since my idea wasn't original, and scrapped it for the competition.

But I never forgot about making it myself. I've never actually tried a bulgogi burger in Korea (it's been about 15 years since I've been there), and decided that I didn't want to know how it is made in tha' Motherland. I wanted to come up with my own. Besides, someone also told me that many "Bulgogi Burgers" are not burgers at all - they are real pieces of bulgogi slapped between the buns. Who knows? I didn't care.

The two most popular cuts of beef for Korean barbecue are cross-cut shortribs (galbee) and thinly-sliced ribeye (bulgogi). However, marinating a whole side of beef, or in this case, a flank steak ,in the same seasonings, grilling, then slicing the grilled steak after cooking is a good way to enjoy Korean barbecue as well. Most Koreans wrap up a slice of beef with a little spoonful of rice and some red pepper sauce in a lettuce leaf, but I usually leave the rice out and double up on the hot sauce.

In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 Tbsp sesame oil, 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp. minced ginger, 4-5 minced garlic cloves, and a dash of black pepper.

Place a 2 lb flank steak in a large zipper seal bag, along with the marinade. Let steak marinate for about 30 minutes, turning the bag occasionally to cover all sides. 

Grill the marinated flank steak for about 5 minutes per side for medium rare. Remove the steak from the heat and let sit, covered, for at least five minutes. Do not touch, poke or prod it.

Thinly slice the beef across the grain. Serve with whole leaves of red leaf lettuce and goh-choo-jahng (Korean red pepper sauce).

It's the tail end of the Mother's Day weekend, and I didn't get to spend a single second with Mom. She' s still overseas visiting her Mom, so our celebration of Mom will occur when she returns.

So while everyone else was busy cleaning the house, serving Mom breakfast in bed, making brunch for the whole family, or getting ready to take Mom out to dinner, I was spending time just thinking about Mom and home. I started thinking about the foods that Mom used to make for me and my sisters when we were little - some of it is forgettable, as I'm sure at some point my Mom tried to make us eat something that I've chosen to block out of my memory, but most of it is stuff that I will forever associate with my childhood, homes in various cities as we moved all over the country, and of course, Mom. The woman who cooked it and put it on the table for us.