![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kevin's Not-so-Korean Beef
Mar. 17th, 2023 10:02 pmOn a Costco shopping trip a few weeks ago we picked up a package of Kevin's Korean BBQ-Style.
Our experience with heat-and-eat packaged foods at Costco has been mixed. A few are genuine hits, items that we buy again and again. Most are "enh".... They're edible, but not enjoyable enough, or not good enough in terms of quality-price ratio (QPR), that we'd ever buy them again.
We bought this package of bulgogi because (a) we haven't had it before and were curious to try it, and (b) we like bulgogi. I've traveled to Korea numerous times and always enjoyed the barbecued meats there— bulgogi, bulkalbi, etc. We've enjoyed numerous Korean restaurants in the SF Bay Area. And I've made the dishes myself at home from scratch, including making the meat marinade/sauce from scratch as well as from bottled sauces. Oh, and (c) this was on sale, $5 off. 😅
I can make a decent Korean beef dish from scratch. It's not restaurant quality, but it's good enough that you know what it is. I hoped buying a package would yield at least as good results with less effort.
Inside the package are 4 sealed envelopes. Two are precooked meat, sous vide style; two are sauce.
Above I mentioned QPR.... I was disappointed to find that this package marked "32 oz." contained maybe 20 oz. of actual meat. (The scale shows 22.36 oz. but those plastic envelopes weigh almost a full ounce, then there's all the cooking fluid packaged in with them.) For the full price of $19 per package this is already looking like a poor QPR.
Because the meat is already precooked, preparation is just a matter of draining the meat, briefly searing it in a skillet, and tossing it with the sauce. I used just one of the two sauce packets as it seemed like both would make it overly saucy. Also, the sauce is sweet; adding both packets would make the dish overly sweet. I garnished the meat with sesame seeds before serving.
I wasn't feeling like going full Korean with dinner the other night so I made mashed potatoes and green beans to go with the meat. That very non-Korean pairing turned out to be fine as Kevin's Korean BBQ-Style Meat is not very Korean, either. The flavor is way too sweet, even with only half the sauce used. And sweetness is practically the only dimension of the flavor. There are no real notes of garlic, onion, or ginger. It might pass muster for "Korean" food in Iowa.
Even worse, the meat isn't good quality. It's tough and stringy. In Korea, a good barbecue restaurant is basically a butcher shop with stoves. People go there not just because the sauce and preparation are good, but because the meat itself is fundamentally good.
I finished off the meat from Kevin's because it wasn't bad enough to want to trash, but it's nowhere near good enough to buy again.
Our experience with heat-and-eat packaged foods at Costco has been mixed. A few are genuine hits, items that we buy again and again. Most are "enh".... They're edible, but not enjoyable enough, or not good enough in terms of quality-price ratio (QPR), that we'd ever buy them again.
We bought this package of bulgogi because (a) we haven't had it before and were curious to try it, and (b) we like bulgogi. I've traveled to Korea numerous times and always enjoyed the barbecued meats there— bulgogi, bulkalbi, etc. We've enjoyed numerous Korean restaurants in the SF Bay Area. And I've made the dishes myself at home from scratch, including making the meat marinade/sauce from scratch as well as from bottled sauces. Oh, and (c) this was on sale, $5 off. 😅
I can make a decent Korean beef dish from scratch. It's not restaurant quality, but it's good enough that you know what it is. I hoped buying a package would yield at least as good results with less effort.
Inside the package are 4 sealed envelopes. Two are precooked meat, sous vide style; two are sauce.
Above I mentioned QPR.... I was disappointed to find that this package marked "32 oz." contained maybe 20 oz. of actual meat. (The scale shows 22.36 oz. but those plastic envelopes weigh almost a full ounce, then there's all the cooking fluid packaged in with them.) For the full price of $19 per package this is already looking like a poor QPR.
Because the meat is already precooked, preparation is just a matter of draining the meat, briefly searing it in a skillet, and tossing it with the sauce. I used just one of the two sauce packets as it seemed like both would make it overly saucy. Also, the sauce is sweet; adding both packets would make the dish overly sweet. I garnished the meat with sesame seeds before serving.
I wasn't feeling like going full Korean with dinner the other night so I made mashed potatoes and green beans to go with the meat. That very non-Korean pairing turned out to be fine as Kevin's Korean BBQ-Style Meat is not very Korean, either. The flavor is way too sweet, even with only half the sauce used. And sweetness is practically the only dimension of the flavor. There are no real notes of garlic, onion, or ginger. It might pass muster for "Korean" food in Iowa.
Even worse, the meat isn't good quality. It's tough and stringy. In Korea, a good barbecue restaurant is basically a butcher shop with stoves. People go there not just because the sauce and preparation are good, but because the meat itself is fundamentally good.
I finished off the meat from Kevin's because it wasn't bad enough to want to trash, but it's nowhere near good enough to buy again.
