The trick to this Korean short ribs recipe is to marinate thinly cut beef ribs in our savory-sweet soy marinade, then cook them on a hot grill or grill pan until they’re caramelized and a little bit charred.

Adam is obsessed with Korean-style ribs. Also called beef Galbi, these are thinly sliced beef short ribs that soak up all the flavor from the marinade and cook in just a few minutes on the grill. You get those perfect caramelized, charred edges that we can’t get enough of.

The Galbi marinade is a lot like our go-to bulgogi marinade, just with a little extra brown sugar, an onion, and more aromatics for an authentic flavor. This is one of our favorite ways to bring Korean BBQ flavors into our own kitchen, and you can totally do it at home, too!

Key Ingredients

• Flanken Ribs: For this recipe, you’ll want thinly sliced short ribs. Somewhere between 1/4-inch and 3/4-inch thick is perfect. The thin cut means they grill up super fast. When you’re shopping, look for packages labeled “flanken ribs,” “Korean-style ribs,” or “LA-style beef short ribs.” Just make sure they’re cut across the bone, so you get 3 to 4 little round bones in each piece.
• Soy Sauce: This is the base of our marinade. We usually go for low-sodium soy sauce, but low-sodium tamari works great, too.
• Rice Wine Vinegar: Look for unsweetened rice vinegar (usually with a green bottle cap or label).
• Sesame Oil: Toasted sesame oil adds a lovely, toasty, rich flavor to the ribs.
• Brown Sugar and Honey: We really love both for this. The combination makes our beef taste more interesting and complex. The honey also caramelizes beautifully. We use the same combination when making beef bulgogi, another Korean-inspired recipe.
• Black Pepper: We use a lot of black pepper in this recipe. I hand-grind mine, so it has to be worth it. Trust me, it is! One teaspoon is just right.
• Garlic and Ginger: I always go for fresh garlic. For ginger, you can use fresh ginger root or grab ginger puree from the store (refrigerated or frozen both work).
• Pear: This is the secret ingredient in a lot of Korean marinades. It adds sweetness and helps tenderize the beef. We look for Asian, Korean, or Nashi pears, but if you can’t find those, a ripe Bosc or Anjou pear works just fine.
• Lettuce, Rice, and Sides: To make it a full meal, we serve these ribs with steamed rice and lettuce leaves for wrapping. Don’t forget the banchan (little sides) like kimchi or spicy cucumber salad, and a bit of ssamjang, the savory Korean dipping sauce that ties it all together.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Korean Short Ribs at Home

Tip 1: Prepare the ribs. If you have thin-cut flanken ribs that are 3/8-inch or thinner, skip this tip. If, however, you can only find thicker-cut ribs (say 1/2-inch), stick around. The thinner the ribs, the more tender they turn out, so if you are sitting there with a thicker cut, it’s a good idea to grab a meat mallet (a dual-sided one with the spiked teeth on one side). Lay each rib flat, then lightly pound the beef using the pointy side. This helps break up connective tissue, making the meat more tender in the end.

Note: Ribs thicker than 1/2-inch won’t have the same results, even with the meat mallet.

Tip 2: Make our galbi marinade. We like using our food processor to make the marinade. If you don’t have one, you can make this marinade by hand, but a food processor makes really quick work of it. Toss everything in and hit pulse until mostly smooth. If you’re doing it by hand, you’ll mince the garlic, finely grate the ginger with a microplane, then grate the pear and onion with a box grater.

Tip 3: Marinate overnight. If you are short on time, you can cut the marinating time down a bit, but for the best results, we highly recommend leaving the ribs in the marinade overnight.

Once made, pour the marinade over your ribs, then massage them and move them around in the marinade so all of the beef is well covered. Cover the bowl, then refrigerate. If you have the chance, go back once or twice and move the ribs around a bit to make sure everything is still well coated.

Tip 4: Grill the ribs. At a Korean barbecue restaurant, there’s often a grill right in the middle of the table where you can quickly sear/grill the ribs. At home, we use our outdoor grill or a heavy-bottomed grill pan over medium-high heat.

If cooking on a grill pan, add a little oil, then cook the marinated ribs in batches, keeping one layer of ribs in the pan at a time (stacking too many at once will steam the beef rather than caramelize and brown it).

Our Favorite Way to Serve Korean Ribs

We love serving these family-style next to rice, big lettuce leaves, kimchi, and ssamjang (a savory dipping sauce — look near gochujang in Korean markets or more internationally friendly grocery stores). Very often, when we’re out at a Korean BBQ place, we’ve seen people using kitchen shears to cut the grilled beef from the bones, then take the meat and build their bite. If you have some on hand, try it! It does make removing the beef from the bones easy. Otherwise, just get in there!

More of Our Favorite Beef Recipes

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This impressive braised short ribs recipe has mouthwateringly tender beef slowly cooked in a caramelized onion and red wine broth.

Think of this dish as French onion soup meets red wine braised short ribs. It’s cozy, it’s rich, and it’s perfect for a cold evening. We’ll caramelize lots of onions for this dish, adding a sweet, rich onion flavor to the braising liquid. Then, to achieve that pull-apart texture, you’ll braise the beef for three hours, but all of that’s hands-off.

You’ll be left with unbelievably tender and flavorful beef and a thick, rich gravy swimming with caramelized onions. Your best bet is to serve this over something that soaks up all of it, like creamy polenta, grits, mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, or thick, crusty bread.

Key Ingredients

• Short Ribs: There are two popular kinds of beef short ribs sold in stores, chuck and plate. If you have the choice, use plate short ribs cut into smaller pieces (3 to 4 inches long), sometimes labeled English-style. They have the best balance of meat and fat and become especially tender when cooked low and slow. Chuck short ribs are smaller and a bit more irregular in shape, but will still work. We also use short ribs for these bbq beef ribs.
• Onions: Use yellow onions or sweet onions in this dish. Both will caramelize wonderfully.
• Tomato Paste and Garlic: The tomato paste adds richness. I love the double-concentrated tubes, since the tube and screw on lid make it easy to store what you haven’t used. Fresh garlic is best here.
• Flour: Use all-purpose flour to help thicken the gravy.
• Wine: A dry red wine is perfect. Use something you’d drink. We like Chianti, Bordeaux blends, or Merlot.
• Stock: The short ribs add a lot of beefiness to the gravy, so plain store-bought beef stock works nicely. However, to make this completely from scratch, here is our beef stock recipe.
• Herbs: We love fresh thyme in this and always add a bay leaf. Rosemary is nice, too, but can be overpowering. If you have it on hand, feel free to add ¼ to ½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary to the beef before braising in the oven.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Braised Short Ribs

Tip 1: Brown your short ribs. Before braising the beef, you really want to take the time to brown the short ribs on all sides first. This adds flavor to the pot, which we will use to build the braising liquid, and it adds flavor and texture to the beef.

Heat a Dutch oven or braiser, add olive oil, then brown on all sides. Since we have a lot of short ribs, you’ll likely need to do this in two batches.

Tip 2: Caramelize the onions. If you’ve ever made French onion soup, then you know the beauty of caramelized onions. They take a little time, but I promise it’s worth it for this showy dish.

To do it, you’ll add a little butter to the rendered beef fat in the pot (yep!). Then add your onions, give them a good stir, and cover the pot. Leave them for 10 minutes. When you uncover them, they will have softened and released some moisture into the pan. From there, uncover and continue cooking, stirring often, until they are deeply browned and smell sweet (30-ish minutes more).

Tip 3: Simmer the wine. As you are building the braising liquid, add wine to the pot. It adds so much flavor, and red wine braised short ribs are an absolute classic! Before adding anything else to the pot, simmer the wine for a few minutes to burn off some of the alcohol.

Tip 4: Cover with a lid and slowly braise in the oven. To get that pull-apart, tender beef, you need to slowly cook the short ribs for around 3 hours. Think of it as similar to making beef stew, where you want the fat and collagen to melt and the connective tissues to soften and become really tender.

Add the browned beef to the braising liquid, and make sure it’s mostly covered so it does not dry out. Then cook slowly, covered, in the oven for about 3 hours. After 3 hours, the beef will be shockingly tender and so delicious.

Serving Suggestions

You’ll be left with a lot of braising liquid. It’s thick, laced with sweet onions, and absolutely delicious (with or without the beef!). I highly recommend skimming the fat at the top of the pot. There’s going to be quite a bit. Once you do, you can serve the beef on or off the bone. A few bones may already have slid off the meat (it’s that tender). We remove the bones, place chunks of tender beef on top of polenta, grits, or mashed potatoes, then spoon a generous amount of the braising liquid over the top. You’ll probably run out of beef before the gravy, but I still think you should save it for spooning over something else for dinner another night.

This dish is intentionally rich. If you’d like something a little lighter to start or on the side, we love this fennel salad, peppy lemon vinaigrette over greens, classic roasted carrots, or these roasted carrots and parsnips.

More Mouthwatering, Tender Beef Recipes

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