Meat jun
Meat jun is thin marinated beef dipped in egg and pan-fried, served up plate-lunch style with rice and mac salad. It has a Korean name, but you will really only find it in Hawaii. It was one of my after-school favorites.
What it is
Meat jun is paper-thin beef, marinated in shoyu and sesame, then dredged in a little flour, dipped in beaten egg, and fried just until the egg sets into a soft golden layer. It is not a heavy batter. The egg is thin and glossy, and the beef is so thin it cooks in about a minute a side. You cut it into strips and eat it with rice, usually as part of a plate lunch next to mac salad and a scoop of kim chee.
A short history
Korean families started coming to Hawaii in 1903 to work the plantations, and over the next few generations Korean food worked its way onto the local plate lunch, right alongside the Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Portuguese cooking that was already there. Meat jun shows up in that mix in the 1970s. A lot of people trace it to a spot called Kim Chee Number One in Kaneohe on Oahu, which put it on the menu and made it a plate lunch regular.
Here is the part that surprises people: even though the name comes from Korean, meat jun is not really a dish you find back in Korea. It grew out of jeon, the family of Korean egg-battered pan-fried foods, but the beef version served this way is a Hawaii creation. Korean families here built it to fit the plate lunch, and it stayed local.
How to make it at home
This is a weeknight dish once the beef is sliced thin. If you can, buy it pre-sliced from a Korean or Japanese market, the kind cut for bulgogi or shabu shabu. The marinade is lighter than bulgogi, less sweet, more shoyu and sesame.
Meat jun
Serves 4, about 30 minutes plus marinating time
For the beef
- 1 lb beef, sliced very thin (about 1/8 inch), top round or ribeye
- 1/4 cup shoyu
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, grated
- 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
- 2 green onions, chopped
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
For frying
- 1/2 cup flour, for dredging
- 3 eggs, beaten
- Neutral oil, for the pan
Dipping sauce, optional
- 2 tbsp shoyu, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tsp sesame oil, a little chopped green onion, a pinch of gochugaru
Steps
- Stir the marinade ingredients into the beef and let it sit in the fridge, 2 to 4 hours. Longer than that and it gets too salty.
- Set up a plate of flour and a bowl of beaten egg. Heat a thin layer of oil in a skillet over medium.
- Take a slice of beef, dredge it in flour and shake off the extra, then dip it in the egg to coat.
- Lay it in the pan and fry about a minute a side, until the egg is set and golden. Do not crowd the pan.
- Drain on a rack or paper towel. Cut into strips and serve with hot rice and the dipping sauce.
Leftovers reheat fine, and cold meat jun straight from the fridge is honestly its own kind of good. If you want more island cooking, here is how I make spam musubi.