Samgyeopsal-gui (Grilled Pork Belly)

Not every Korean grill begins in a bowl of marinade. Samgyeopsal-gui is pork belly trusted to be pork belly: three layers of meat and fat, cut thick, salted lightly, grilled at the table, and eaten before the edges lose their crispness. If you bury it in sauce before it meets the heat, you have missed the dish.

The work tonight is simple, but it is not careless. Buy pork belly with clear stripes of meat and fat, not a block of white fat with one tired line of lean. Cut it 6 to 8 mm thick if you are using a pan, or 10 mm if you have a tabletop grill. Too thin and it dries before the fat has time to render; too thick and the outside burns while the center stays heavy. Technique first. Let it taste like itself.

My teacher would set the lettuce, perilla, sliced garlic, green chilies, ssamjang, and a small dish of sesame oil salt on the table before the pork touched the pan. She said a cook who makes people wait while the meat cools has already lost half the meal. Grill, turn, cut, wrap, eat. 음식을 나누면서 정도 나눕니다. When we share food, we share affection, and samgyeopsal is built for that kind of table.