For a camping trip with a few friends, I decreed “no burgers, no sausages”, and a very loose theme of “Korean BBQ”.

I don’t think I’d ever cooked Korean food before, but the general idea of marinated, grilled, thin-sliced meat and lots of banchan (side dishes, most of which could be made ahead of time) seemed feasible for camping, and a break from the ordinary.

I bought a nice large marbled ribeye steak and sliced it thinly  against the grain (following an online suggestion to pre-freeze it for an hour to aid with slicing thin helped):

Based on a quick recipe lookup on my phone the night before (while running around getting ready), I made a marinade of soy sauce (tamari, diluted 1:1 in water), sesame oil, sesame seeds, lots of crushed garlic, and minced fresh ginger, and ended up soaking the ribeye for about 24 hours before grilling it. The next morning I decided to add tri tip so we had more meat, and sliced that (a bit thicker), and marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and black pepper for about 12 hours.

That evening, on the grill at the camp site.

Served with lettuce leaves to wrap it, as well as a bean sprout salad (a package of bean sprouts boiled for about 4 minutes on a gas camping stove, then drained and mixed with minced raw garlic, green onions, chili flakes, and sesame seeds). A good refreshing counterpart to the meat (though I could have also cooked the garlic a bit).

Also on the side: spicy cucumber fresh pickles (cucumbers soaked for 2 days in the fridge in a mix of white vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, a little water and salt, and sriracha: sort of a half-assed pickle not carefully set up to ferment or preserve, just for flavor), and some excellent spicy pickled broccolini that someone else brought, as well as kimchee. The nori sheets worked to wrap beef once the lettuce ran out.

For dessert: grilled pineapple, and grilled nectarines with creme fraiche (another excellent set of contributions from a friend):

Overall, this was a successful dinner. I thought the marinated ribeye turned out really well, but the tri tip ended up a bit too salty (I should have diluted the soy sauce, or had something to balance it like sugar?)– but some people preferred the salty tri tip. I’ll have to try variants again in the future.

Oh, not shown: a delicious marinated pork belly that someone else butchered and brought.

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Side note: we packed the food, beer, ice, cooking tools, and so on in and out by bike. Shown below is a bike-mounted cooler. Just because…