Ansan Star Plaza market butcher: dakgalbi priced by meat weight only

A review after getting a discount — Morakmorak Home & Cook, an Ansan butcher shop known for all kinds of meat side dishes.

Morakmorak Home & Cook in Seongpo-dong, Ansan: a third visit

Back again at Morakmorak Home & Cook, my go-to side-dish spot in Seongpo-dong, Ansan. This is already my third-plus visit. On days when I want a home-cooked meal but can't be bothered making every side dish from scratch, stopping by here and grabbing a few things makes putting together a meal so much easier.

Where Morakmorak Home & Cook is and where to park

It's located underground at Star Plaza traditional market in Seongpo-dong, so it's easy to swing by while doing your market shopping, and there's ground-level parking for when you've got a lot to carry. (They register your parking for you too!!)

What the shop sells

Walk in and every refrigerated case is packed with side dishes and ingredients. True to a side-dish shop, there's a huge range of banchan (side dishes), plus ingredients for soups and stews and meat too — it's the kind of place where you end up grabbing this and that once you're inside, haha.

Further into the fridge there's meat ready to grill straight away, plus plenty of pre-marinated options you can cook simply at home.

On days when it's hard to prep several side dishes at once, grabbing a few ready-made menu items like this is a pretty good solution.

This visit: Korean pork samgyeopsal and seasoned dakgalbi

This time I picked up Korean pork belly (daepae samgyeopsal, thinly sliced) and dakgalbi. Having pork belly on hand is handy for all sorts of things, so I grabbed some along too — great stir-fried with kimchi, with bean sprouts or other vegetables, or tossed into stews or other dishes a little at a time. It's a surprisingly reliable ingredient to keep in the fridge.

Why the dakgalbi is weighed without vegetables

But the real reason for this shopping trip was the dakgalbi! It looks like a lot even just in photos, and what I liked even more is that Morakmorak Home & Cook sells it by meat weight alone, not by the total weight including vegetables. Usually when you buy marinated meat, vegetables get mixed in and the actual meat portion ends up smaller than expected — but here the meat itself comes in generously, so you just add as many vegetables as you like at home.

Stir-frying the dakgalbi at home with cabbage, onion and carrot

I added cabbage, onion, and carrot to the dakgalbi. Dakgalbi really does taste best loaded with vegetables! Cabbage adds a sweet edge as it cooks, onion brings out its natural sweetness and pairs well with the sauce, and the carrot made everything colorful and even more appetizing. The portion was seriously huge, haha. I'd planned to stir-fry it all in one pan, but once the vegetables went in, there was no way it was fitting. In the end I had to set some meat aside partway through and cook it in batches, haha.

As the sauce bubbled away and soaked into the chicken and vegetables, the kitchen filled with a great smell. The cabbage and onion wilted down as the sauce reduced to a thick coating, soaking deep into the chicken.

A final sprinkle of sesame seeds and it had that proper dakgalbi-restaurant look!

How the dakgalbi tasted

The sauce was spicy-sweet with real depth, and the chicken had soaked it up so well it went perfectly with rice. Adding as many vegetables as I wanted at home meant every bite of meat and veg together had varied texture and felt extra generous.

The chicken wasn't tough at all — nice and tender — so the well-seasoned bits paired with vegetables kept me reaching for more. I usually go heavy on cabbage with dakgalbi, and this time too I was glad I loaded it up.

I also tried the shredded green onion (pajchae) they threw in for free on the side — the crisp, fragrant onion alongside the spicy dakgalbi gave it a whole different flavor dimension, which was great. For something put together simply at home, it turned into a pretty solid spread.

This dakgalbi in particular had such a generous amount of meat that I was satisfied on quantity alone, and I liked being able to cook it my way with whatever vegetables I had at home. Best of all, there's no hassle of making your own sauce or prepping ingredients — you just throw it in a pan, add vegetables, and stir-fry, so it's genuinely simple. I also grabbed the Korean pork belly since it seems useful for all kinds of dishes, and once again, my fridge ended up nicely stocked after this shopping trip, haha.

I've already been back more than three times, and part of the fun of Morakmorak Home & Cook is picking a new menu item each time I visit. On days when I'm craving home cooking or don't feel like prepping side dishes, this is a place I know I'll come back to for a simple, delicious meal.

Morakmorak Home & Cook, underground, Star Plaza, 513 Hwarang-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea