Meat Jun (Korean Marinated Steak from Hawai'i)
Meat jun is a Korean fusion dish from Hawai'i, consisting of marinated and battered steak perfect for plate lunches.
Servings: 4 people
Ingredients
- 2 lbs flank steak tenderized, see notes
- 1 inch piece of ginger grated
- 1 clove garlic grated
- 1/2 cup Japanese or Hawaiian soy sauce
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup mirin
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- 2 stalks green onion chopped
Instructions
- Cut tenderized flank steak into four equal pieces.
- In a dish large enough to fit your steak, mix grated ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Place meat in the sauce and marinate at least 30 minutes and up to overnight.
- When ready to cook, pour 1/2 to 1 inch layer of oil in a skillet with deep sides (cast iron works great for this). Heat oil on stovetop while you prepare your steak.
- In a shallow dish, beat eggs until smooth and add green onions. Put flour in a separate shallow dish.
- Use a paper towel to wipe off excess marinade from the flank steak. Then dredge each piece in flour and dip in the egg batter. Place immediately in the skillet with oil.
- Fry battered meat for 1-2 minutes on each side. Remove cooked meat to a wire rack and let cool. Note: If your tenderized meat was thicker than 1/2 inch you may need to cook a minute or two longer per side.
- When meat has cooled enough to handle, slice into strips (like katsu) and serve over rice.
Notes
- Proper meat jun should be super thin, which you can achieve by asking the butcher at your grocery store to run the steak through their tenderizer twice. If that's not an option you can always tenderize the meat yourself at home. Aim to reach about 1/4 inch thickness maximum. I've heard that at some Asian markets, there are large pieces of thinly sliced beef that can be used for meat jun, but I haven't found any near me. Most of the moms on the mainland I know use flank steak.
- You can substitute sake for the mirin.
- I always get questions about decreasing sugar. You can adjust the sugar to your tastes, but an equal ratio of soy sauce to sugar is a pretty common level of sweetness in Hawaiian foods.
- Patting your meat dry(ish) before dredging in flour helps the batter to stick to the meat better.