Snowed in with Jajangmyun

On Sunday, I gave Bret a few different options as to what I could make for dinner.  Since we were getting snowed in, I was craving something warm and hearty.  Much to my delight, Bret picked one of my favorite Korean dishes - jajangmyun!  I last made this dish for Project Food Blog but in my haste, I didn't give great photos or instructions so I thought that I would go through the steps to make one of these classic Korean dishes.

First, I washed, peeled and diced four small potatoes.

I then roughly chopped up one large sweet onion.

I had purchased a little over a pound of sirloin tips and I cut those down to bite-sized pieces.

I then warmed up a pan on the stove with a few tablespoons of vegetable oil.  I first added the onions and cooked them until they got translucent.

When the onions were translucent, I added the diced potatoes to the pan and cooked those for about three or four minutes.  The potatoes were definitely not cooked through yet but I removed both of the potatoes and the onions from the pan and set them aside.

I then warmed up a large sauce pan on the stove with the remaining vegetable oil from the vegetables and added another tablespoon or so of fresh oil to the pan.  I added my sirloin tips to the pan and browned them.

I then added my potatoes and onions to the pan, along with two cups of water to continue cooking the beef and vegetables in the water.

This is when I added the ingredient that really makes the dish - black bean paste!

Since I had a lot of vegetables and beef, I added four heaping tablespoons to the sauce pan and gave everything a stir.  I put a lid on the pan and allowed this entire mixture to continue cooking until the liquids in the pot came to a boil.

Jajangmyun is supposed to be a thick sauce and the trick is to add cornstarch to thicken the sauce up.  I added a few tablespoons after the liquids came to a boil.  Once this happens, I lowered the heat to let the stew simmer while I boiled some water.  I found this package of bean strips at the grocery store and I decided to use these for my noodles.  I put about half the package in the water and I found that these bean strips cook really quickly so just a minute or so in boiling water did the trick!

Afterwards, I plated the noodles.

And then topped it with the hearty jajangmyun sauce.

This dish really hit the spot as the snow was falling and the wind was howling.  We had plenty of leftovers for dinner the next day (over rice) and I'm looking forward to having some for lunch at work today.

What dishes warmed you up during this recent snow storm?