Most galbi-jjim recipes open with soaking the ribs in cold water for a couple of hours to draw the blood out.
This one has no such step. Instead the ribs get seared hard over high heat, and then braised.
It’s chef Ryu Su-young’s recipe, and it’s my three boys’ favorite dish in any season — they scrape the pot and mix the sauce into their rice.
Buy ribs, get them going, cook rice while they braise, and dinner is done inside an hour.

At a glance

Ingredients

  • pork ribs 1kg
  • for searing : salt 2 pinches
  • optional: vegetables (onion 1, scallion 2 stalks)
  • first sauce : sugar5, vinegar1, soy sauce5, tuna fish sauce5
  • second sauce : gochugaru1, ketchup2, garlic3, lots of pepper (gochugaru3 if you like it hot)

Prep

  • optional: cut the onion and scallion however you like

Cooking

  • sear the pork ribs golden in a hot pan + salt 2 pinches
  • add sugar5 and coat the meat
  • rest of the first sauce into the middle, boil it, then fold into the meat
  • second sauce and vegetables (optional) in, fry
  • add water and pepper, reduce on medium about 40 minutes
  • when the sauce is right, blast it on high to drive off the moisture

Ingredients (serves 4)

Main

  • pork ribs 1 kg (2.2 lb)
  • salt 2 pinches, for searing

First sauce — this becomes the braising liquid. Numbers are tablespoons (1 tbsp = 15 ml)

  • sugar 5, vinegar 1, soy sauce 5, chamchi-aekjeot 5

Second sauce — not liquid. Numbers are tablespoons (1 tbsp = 15 ml)

  • gochugaru 1, ketchup 2, garlic 3
  • gochugaru 3 if you like heat

After the water goes in

  • pepper — twenty twists of the grinder. More than you’d think tastes better.

Vegetables — skipped entirely for the three boys :-)

  • onion 1, scallion 2 stalks

Chamchi-aekjeot is Korean tuna fish sauce, sold at H Mart or online. Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce substitutes, but use a little less — it’s saltier and sharper.
Gochugaru is Korean chili flakes; don’t reach for cayenne, which is much hotter and far finer.

Prep

  • Don’t soak the pork ribs. Use them exactly as they came.
  • (If using vegetables) Cut the onion and scallion into large pieces. Bigger is better if you plan to fish them out whole later.

Cooking

  • Heat the pan on high, lay in the pork ribs, and sprinkle over salt 2 pinches.
  • Sear until the outside is golden. It takes under 10 minutes.
  • Add sugar 5 and coat the outside of the meat with it.
  • Push the meat to the edges of the pan, pour the rest of the first sauce into the empty middle, let it boil, then fold it into the meat.
  • Add the second sauce and the vegetables and fry.
  • Pour in water until the meat is just barely showing above it, and add the pepper.
  • Braise 40 minutes on medium heat.
  • When the sauce has reduced to about right, turn the heat to high for 1–2 minutes to drive off the last of the moisture.
  • (If you used vegetables) Lift them out whole when it’s done.

Notes

No soaking

Galbi-jjim usually starts with a cold-water soak to pull the blood out. Not here.
Searing the outside hard over high heat before braising is what defines this recipe.
The searing takes under 10 minutes, so you save the entire soaking time.

Five tablespoons of sugar go in first

Before the soy sauce, before the fish sauce, five tablespoons of sugar.
The sugar is doing two things here.
One is priming the meat so the seasoning soaks in; the other is putting a light char on the surface.

Why the sauce is split in two

The first is the part that becomes liquid (sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, chamchi-aekjeot); the second is the part that doesn’t (gochugaru, ketchup, garlic).
Adding it all at once wouldn’t change much.
But you’re stirring big pieces of rib around, and mixing everything from the start makes the sauce thick and sticky.
Let the liquid seasonings soak in evenly first, then fold in the rest — much less splatter.

Five tablespoons of tuna fish sauce, two of ketchup

Two ingredients you don’t usually see in galbi-jjim.
The fish sauce handles the salt while bringing savoriness along with it — it’s splitting the seasoning job with the 5 tablespoons of soy sauce.
The ketchup pulls the rest of the sauce together.

Boil the sauce in the middle of the pan

When the first sauce goes in, push the meat to the edges and clear the center.
You get to boil the sauce on its own without pulling anything out of the pan, before it mixes with the meat.
Dumping it straight in still tastes fine, but boiling it first is better.

The vegetables are genuinely optional.
At our house they go in cut large, because of three boys who won’t eat vegetables, and then get lifted out and thrown away at the end.
You take the flavor and leave the vegetables — the same thing happens in Dak Hanmari.

For another pork dish, there’s Kimchi Dwaejigogi-bokkeum.