Quick Ginger Pork

October. The leaves turning, the rain returning, the city pulling inward for the long gray season. I've entered what I'm calling "Korean autumn mode": the shift from cold summer dishes to warm fall cooking, from naengmyeon to jjigae, from patbingsu to hobak-juk. The seasonal shift is second nature now — my cooking follows the Korean calendar, not the American one (though there's significant overlap: both cultures eat soup when it's cold, which is most of the year in Seattle).

This week I made a dish I've been saving for fall: gamjatang — pork bone soup, the hearty, spicy stew I made last year and have been refining since. This version used pork spine from H Mart, simmered for three hours with potatoes, perilla leaves, and a generous amount of gochugaru. The broth was rich and porky, the meat falling off the vertebrae, the perilla leaves adding their distinctive herbal note. Gamjatang is the Korean equivalent of a warm blanket — substantial, comforting, the kind of food that makes you forget the rain outside and the darkness at 5 PM and the waiting for a database to produce a match that may never come.

Promotion review season at Amazon. I'm up for a lateral review — not a promotion but a "meets bar" evaluation that ensures I'm performing at the SDE II level. The review is positive. Derek says I'm "exceeding expectations" and should consider targeting Principal Engineer in the next two to three years. Principal Engineer. The idea is flattering and also — distant. Not because I can't do it but because the part of me that cares about Amazon titles is smaller than it was three years ago. The part that cares about Korean cooking and Korean language and Korean community and the Korean birth mother search is bigger. The Amazon title is real. The Korean identity is realer. I said "realer" and Dr. Yoon would correct my grammar (in English — my Korean grammar she'd be more forgiving of).

The Korean women's dinner group met this week at a restaurant in Bellevue (different from Karen's Bellevue — the Korean restaurant Bellevue, with its cluster of Korean businesses along 156th). We ate budae jjigae and talked about Korean dramas and children's school admissions and the best H Mart locations and the particular annoyance of non-Korean people mispronouncing Korean food names. I contributed a story about a coworker who calls bibimbap "bib-im-bop" with the emphasis on the wrong syllable, and the whole table groaned in solidarity. The groaning was belonging. The shared annoyance was belonging. The small, specific frustrations of being Korean in America — the mispronunciations, the "is that dog?" jokes, the assumption that all Asian food is Chinese — these are the textures of belonging, the things you complain about with your people because they're your people and they understand.

Saturday: Bellevue. I brought gamjatang. David looked into the pot and saw the pork spine and said, "Are those... vertebrae?" I said, "Yes, Dad. Pork spine." He said, "Boeing doesn't put spines in our soup." He tried it anyway. He liked it. David Park, aerospace engineer, eating pork spine soup and liking it. The final frontier.

Gamjatang takes three hours — and some weeks, three hours is exactly what the season calls for. But not every night is a three-hour night, and ginger pork has become my weeknight answer to that same craving: the warmth, the depth, the unmistakable bite of ginger that signals to my body that fall has arrived and soup weather is here to stay. After David ’s reaction to the vertebrae, I figured a slightly more approachable pork dish was also a good idea to have in rotation — same spirit, fewer anatomical surprises.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs pork tenderloin or pork loin, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
2 green onions, sliced, for garnish
Cooked white rice, for serving

Instructions

Make the marinade. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, grated ginger, and minced garlic until combined.
Marinate the pork. Add the thinly sliced pork to a bowl or zip-top bag and pour the marinade over it. Toss to coat evenly and let sit for at least 5 minutes while you heat the pan. For deeper flavor, marinate up to 30 minutes.
Heat the pan. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat until shimmering. The pan should be hot enough to sear, not steam.
Cook the pork. Add the pork slices in a single layer, working in batches if needed to avoid crowding. Cook 2—3 minutes per side until browned and cooked through. Add red pepper flakes if using.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving plate, pour any remaining pan juices over the top, and garnish with sliced green onions. Serve over steamed white rice.

Nutrition (per serving)

Quick Ginger Pork — The Warmth That Carries You Through a Long October