Vietnamese BBQ Sauce

While growing up in Vietnam, I never heard of BBQ sauce. I know the reason is that no large size Vietnamese family, such as mine, had enough meat to feed so many children and BBQ seemed way too expensive for us. Unlike in America, we had different kinds of BBQ from different regions of this country. BBQ is very well known for summer or any time of the year. Personally, I love BBQ sauce, and I always create my own sauce for the one reason that I can control the sweetness of a sauce. The BBQ sauce that I will introduce today is somewhat like the Korean Bulgogi sauce. I got this idea while I was having dinner with my family in a Korean buffet restaurant in California. This buffet served all kinds of beef marinated in the sauce, and we grilled the meat at our table. I went through a few Korean cookbooks and some other Korean web cooking blogs and created my own version of this famous Korean BBQ sauce.  However, some ingredients are not the same, but cooking is always for our self, and the taste is the most important consideration. As long as it is good, name it any way that you want.

Ingredients:
1/2 Fuji apple
1/2 Asian pear – Bosc pear is ok
1/2 onion
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs honey
1/4 cup sake or Korean soju wine
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1 cup water
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 cup peanut oil

Directions:
In a Vitamix or other blender, place all the ingredients and blend well. Pour the sauce in a glass jar with a lid. Refrigerate for one week.

 

 

 

To marinate the meat, beef or chicken, you need:
2 lbs of meat
1 cup of the BBQ sauce
4 green onions, chopped
1 tbs sesame seeds
A few red dried chilies

Place meat in a container with a lid. Pour sauce over the meat and sprinkle with sesame seeds and green onions. Cover and marinate overnight or at least a few hours.

 Turn on the outside BBQ grill or on a stovetop using a cast iron pan. Brush pan with some oil and grill the meat. You can grill some thickly sliced white onions, green onions, or asparagus to serve on the side. Sprinkle a little salt over the meat while grilling, if needed. Serve with rice, steamed noodles, or bread.