Now you can eat Momofuku’s famed bo ssam (almost) whenever you feel like it
In this series, we take a look at recipes from professional chefs and streamline them to capture their essence, while still prioritizing actually eating dinner at a reasonable hour. For this installment, we’re turning our attention to bo ssam, a dish popularized by David Chang at Momofuku Ssäm Bar.
Experiencing the eponymous bo ssam at Momofuku Ssäm Bar was the kind of dining event you put on your bucket list as soon as the New York City restaurant opened in 2006. But scoring a bite of David Chang’s era-defining pork shoulder, served wrapped in lettuce leaves and accompanied by numerous accoutrements, was no easy feat. First, you had to secure a notoriously difficult reservation, and then you had to find four to six pork-loving friends who just happened to be free at 9:30 on a rainy Tuesday night. Sadly, the stars never did align for me and never will, since the new location of Ssäm Bar’s New York location (its second), shuttered in the fall of 2023.
I did check the bo ssam off my list a bit later at Momofuku’s restaurant in Las Vegas, where the dish’s shareable, eat-with-your-hands sensuality and go-for-broke fun made it the perfect fit for that trip. Any lingering pork grease on my fingers that night may or may not have helped me at the craps table later. Anyway, that evening was so memorable that as soon as I got back to Portland, Oregon, I cracked open my copy of the Momofuku cookbook to try making bo ssam at home.
Much like getting a reservation at the original Ssäm Bar, this proved to be quite an undertaking. The recipe requires an 8- to 10-pound bone-in pork butt, 6 to 8 hours of dry brining, four sub-recipes, and roasting the beast in a low oven for 6 hours (in reality it took 8-plus hours for the meat to be fork-tender, and the house smelled like greasy pork for two days). There were also visits to two different Korean markets to find ingredients for the ssam sauce recipe.
By the time I sat down to enjoy the meal with friends, I was too exhausted to eat. Much like, again, the Momofuku experience, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime event, not something I’d ever add to my regular cooking rotation. But I wanted to experience the dish more than twice in my life, and have the energy to actually enjoy it, so I got to work adapting the recipe into something that would require less time (and fewer sub-recipes) but still deliver all the promise of the original.
First, I tackled the dry brining. The purpose of dry brining is to tenderize and infuse meat with moisture and flavor. Initially, the brine (in this case salt and sugar) draws the moisture out of the muscle fibers, which liquifies the salt and sugar, before everything is absorbed back into the meat, seasoning and plumping it simultaneously. Dry brining also gives meat a browner, crispier surface (think golden Thanksgiving turkey).
Straight up, I don’t have time for this. Pork shoulder is already very flavorful, and my chosen cooking method wasn’t going to dry out the meat, so juiciness wasn’t going to be an issue. So I decided to opt instead for a simple rub of a tablespoon each of sugar and kosher salt. Applied right before cooking, it was plenty to season the meat.
Instead of roasting the pork in a low oven for 6 hours or more, I turned to my trusty Instant Pot. After penning three cookbooks on Instant Pot cooking, I have found that the appliance is ideal for cooking tough, fatty cuts of meat. The moist heat and high pressure help break down meat fibers in about two-thirds of the time of stovetop braising. To further expedite the process, I cut the roast into four smaller pieces, since smaller pieces equal less cooking time. And because the meat eventually gets pulled apart anyway, the big roast presentation isn’t strictly necessary unless you are serving Fred Flintstone.
You need to add liquid to the Instant Pot to build up steam to bring it up to pressure. Water would have sufficed, but I found that adding kimchi juice (the liquid in the kimchi jar) infused the meat with the piquant chile flavor that Korean food is famous for; it functioned sort of like an instant marinade. After just 35 minutes, plus a 10-minute natural pressure release time, the pork was very tender, but not pretty and certainly not crispy.
Here’s where I reverted to the original recipe: I rubbed the cooked meat with a mixture of brown sugar, salt, and just enough cooking liquid to create a paste that allowed the mixture to stick to the meat. It worked: A quick roast at 500 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes gave the pork the deep, dark, shellacked meat-candy exterior that made Chang’s bo ssam so very alluring.
While the meat was cooking, I prepared the accompaniments, albeit a pared-back version of them. I didn’t make my own napa kimchi as Chang suggests. It’s a good project for weekend warriors, but there are excellent local brands that I like to support (shout out to Choi’s Kimchi in Portland, Oregon). I also didn’t puree the kimchi as ordered because why would I want to miss out on the crispness of cabbage pieces?
I skipped the raw oysters in the recipe because I’m not a Rockefeller and it was a Tuesday night for Pete’s sake, so pricey bivalves were out. And anyway, I’d rather eat oysters straight out of the half-shell. I also skipped the homemade ssam sauce, which I’d found oily when I made it previously. Instead, I smeared Mama O’s heavenly Kimchi Paste and O’Food Gochujang Spicy Miso Sauce on the wraps. Both gave the wraps the same spicy funk without requiring me to bust out the measuring spoons.
I did make the original ginger scallion sauce sub-recipe from scratch. It’s really more of a relish, and quick work with a mini food processor. Next time, I might just put out a bowl of chopped green onions and pickled ginger. I also made steamed rice, as the original bo ssam recipe calls for, but honestly, I might forgo it next time because the meal is kind of perfect without it. The recipe suggests bibb lettuce for wrapping and while the large, blousy leaves are nice, I found that any leafy lettuce will do.
So, there you are, magic chunks of sweet-salty, crispy pulled pork bundled up in lettuce leaves with tangy kimchi, the umami-rich gochujang sauce of your choice, and gingery scallion relish — all in about an hour and a half. No reservations required.
Easy Bo Ssam Recipe
Adapted from Momofuku: A Cookbook
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients:
For the meat:
¼ cup kimchi juice, from a jar of kimchi
3- to 3 ½-pound pork shoulder roast
1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt (or about ½ tablespoon Morton’s kosher salt), plus 1 teaspoon, divided
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
For the ginger scallion sauce and accompaniments:
1 (3-inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced (about ¼ cup)
2 tablespoons neutral-flavored oil
1 teaspoon soy sauce
½ teaspoon sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 cup sliced green onions (about 1 bunch)
Salt
3 cups cooked short-grain rice, warm (optional)
1 head bibb or green leaf lettuce, washed and leaves separated
1 cup napa cabbage kimchi
½ cup ssamjang sauce, gochujang miso sauce, or kimchi paste (see note above)
Instructions:
Step 1: Set a small rack in the electric pressure cooker. Pour the kimchi juice and ¼ cup water into the pot. Set aside. Place the roast on a cutting board with the fat cap facing up. Cut the roast crosswise into 2-inch-wide slabs. Combine a tablespoon of the salt with the granulated sugar and rub it all over the meat. Place the meat fat side up on the rack. Lock on the pressure cooker’s lid, adjust the steam vent to “sealing,” and set the timer to 35 minutes. When the cooking is complete, let the steam release naturally for 10 minutes. Release the remaining pressure. (Do not quick-release the pressure immediately at the end of cooking; it tends to shred the meat.) Reserve the cooking liquid.
Step 2: While the meat is cooking, make the scallion relish. Put the ginger slices, oil, soy sauce, and vinegar in a mini food processor and whiz until finely chopped, stopping to scrape down the sides once. Add the green onions and whiz again until the mixture is finely chopped. Season with salt to taste. Scrape into a small serving bowl and set aside.
Step 3: Make the meat rub by combining the brown sugar, remaining teaspoon of salt, and 1½ teaspoons of the cooking liquid in a small bowl. Set aside.
Step 4: Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Line a heavy baking pan or broiler pan with foil. Carefully transfer the cooked meat to the baking sheet, aiming to arrange the fatty side up. Spread the brown sugar mixture over the meat; try to keep it from falling off onto the foil or it will burn and smoke. Bake, basting with pan juices once or twice and watching carefully to make sure the meat doesn’t burn, until it’s deeply browned and crispy in places, 8 to 10 minutes. Pull the meat apart with tongs or two forks and transfer to a serving plate. Serve with the accompaniments, wrapping chunks of the pork in lettuce leaves and topping them with the sauce, green onion relish, and kimchi.
Ivy Manning is a Portland, Oregon-based award-winning food writer and author of 10 cookbooks including Tacos A to Z: A Delicious Guide to Nontraditional Tacos. She is a regular recipe tester and editor for Eater as well as restaurants and appliance brands.
Dina Ávila is a photographer in Portland, Oregon.
