Yukjeon (Thin Beef Slices Pan-Fried in Flour and Egg)

Variations

• Jinju style: according to ko.wikipedia, in Jinju in South Gyeongsang the yukjeon is sliced into strips and laid on naengmyeon as a garnish. The photograph is yukjeon served at a naengmyeon restaurant in Daegu.
• Jeolla style: South Jeolla is where yukjeon is mainly eaten today, usually brought to the table as it comes out of the pan and eaten with shredded spring onion. ko.wikipedia records that it began as a Hwanghae dish.
• With sesame and spring onion: like the one in the photograph, it is often cut into bite-sized pieces after frying and scattered with sesame seeds and sliced spring onion. Some cooks mix chopped spring onion into the egg instead.
• The same coat on other things: fillets of white fish in this coat make saengseon-jeon, slices of courgette make hobak-jeon. Unlike the poured batters of haemul pajeon or gamja jeon, this kind of jeon coats one piece at a time and fries each one separately.

Tips

• Leave out the crumb and the egg becomes the outside. Deep frying treats the flour, egg and breadcrumb coat as a coating of its own, and in tonkatsu and schnitzel the flour and egg are the glue that holds the crumb on. Yukjeon stops at the second stage. The egg that was glue becomes the surface, and instead of going under oil it lies in a pan.
• So the heat is set for the egg. With egg on the outside, the egg decides the pan temperature. Eggs says what happens above 80°C: "the proteins contract hard and squeeze water out — dry curds sitting in liquid". Over high heat the coat touching the pan puffs, browns hard and lifts away from the meat. Over medium-low, a minute and a half sets the egg golden, and a 3-4mm slice of beef is cooked in the same time.
• The beef never touches the pan. The coat sits between the meat and the metal, so a lean cut like eye of round is not seared directly but cooks inside its coat. Grilled bare in a pan, that cut dries out and toughens quickly, which is why it is made into jeon.
• Half-freeze it to slice. Exactly as yukhoe puts it: "Twenty to thirty minutes in the freezer firms the surface enough to cut thin and even". Uneven slices leave the thick end underdone by the time the egg has set, so tap them level with the back of the knife as well.
• Blot dry, and flour thinly. Gyukatsu gives the reason: "A wet surface turns the flour into paste". Dry flour takes up the moisture on the surface of the meat and gives the egg something to hold on to. Too much flour and the egg comes away with it, so shake the excess off.
• Turn it once. Move a slice before the egg underneath has set and the coat tears, leaving the meat bare.