In the last three days I have gone out for Korean food two times and eaten at least one Korean-inspired dish at home. I really never get tired of Korean cuisine. While my selections are not always that adventurous (the pot of boiling kimchee that looks strikingly like molten lava is not really my speed…), I find the old standbys too good to not order again and again.

Summertime is a great time to fall in love with Korean food. The two main staple entrees of Korean cuisine — bulgogi and galbi — are meant to be grilled and are quite easy to make.

Here’s an adapted version of my mother-in-law’s Bulgogi recipe:

Bulgogi

2 pounds Top Round or Sirloin sliced as thin as bacon
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup sesame oil
2 green onions, chopped
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced
dash of black pepper

Combine soy sauce through pepper and mix well. Add the beef and marinate in the refrigerator for several hours. Grill on medium heat.

Galbi uses the same marinade but is made with slightly thicker slices of bone-in short rib.

Serve the bulgogi and galbi with plenty of white rice and Bibb lettuce, in which guests can wrap up the rice and meat to make the Korean version of a burrito.

Panchan — Korean small side dishes — should also accompany the meal. My favorite panchan are kimchee, pickled radish, and bean sprouts in sesame oil. I would take a page out of Barefoot Contessa’s book here, when she suggests that one should not be afraid to complement a homemade meal with store-bought elements. In this case, grill the bulgogi, make the rice, and buy the panchan at a local Asian supermarket (my favorite is H-Mart).

If you haven’t tried Korean food, you may want to sample it in a restaurant before preparing it at home. If you are in the Tysons Corner area of Virginia, try Ega — a new Korean restaurant owned by the same owners as Mandu in DC’s Dupont Circle. And there is always the old standard, Woo Lae Oak, the tried-and-true Korean restaurant chain with locations from SoHo to Seoul.